Face to Face
by Mattk
Summary: Sequel to Devil's Truth. The Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations try to heal the wounds opened by Belial as they hunt a rampaging Angelus through LA.
1. Day 1

_Ring._

Kate Lockley stumbled for the phone in her darkened apartment.

_Ring._

" 'mcomin', 'mcomin'," She muttered.

Ri-

She grabbed it and hit the 'Talk' button. "H'lo."

"Hi, Kate! How're you doing?"

She snapped awake. "What do you want, Angel?"

"Whoah, grouchy! Did I interrupt something? No, wait a second, look who I'm talking to. Of course I didn't."

"I asked you what you want," She demanded.

"Me? I just want you to come out here and meet me in this nice, dark alley beside your building."

"That's real funny, Angel."

"So that's a no?"

"That's right. That's a no. And you're still not invited in." She hit the 'off' button, but the phone was only halfway back to the cradle before it rang again. She snatched it back to her ear and jammed her thumb down on the 'talk' button. "Listen, Angel—"

"No, _you_ listen," He snarled. It was a bestial sound. Shocked, she fell silent. He hadn't sounded like that even when she was trying to prevent him from visiting his friends in the hospital. "And you'd better consider it a little more carefully, because I'm not the soul-whipped wuss you're used to antagonizing."

"Then who—"

"The reason I called you this late is because I've been working on your building all night. Believe me when I say that I have some experience with arson, and I know how to block exits. If you don't come out, then all those pretty young couples and cute little babies that you live with burn. Call for back up, and they burn."

"You're bluffing."

"Can you take the chance? See you in a few minutes. Oh, and when you get here, call me Angelus."

--

Five minutes later, Kate was in the appointed alley.

She'd never liked this alley. No city dweller would have, but most of her neighbors were so accustomed to it that they didn't even notice any more. This was a good neighborhood, and nothing had ever actually happened in that alley. There had been no muggings, no rapes. No bodies had been found in the dumpster that half-filled it, no needles or crack vials mixed with the trash that littered the ground. But Kate was a police officer, and a highly dedicated one at that. She looked at all things and all situations and assessed them in terms of the potential for a crime to be perpetrated. She looked at the alley, and the potential actually scared her. It was dark, of course, but there was more to it than that. Between the dumpster, the fire escapes, and the trash cans, there were too many places to hide.

Too many angles of attack.

She was dressed in blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a leather jacket—the closest things to armor that she owned. In one hand was a cross with its handle whittled into a stake. In the other was a squirt bottle full of holy water.

"Alright, Angel," She called. "I'm here."

A dark, hulking shape stepped out from behind the dumpster. It struck a match, then raised it to the cigarette he held in his lips, revealing the vampire's familiar face. " 'Bout time," he muttered around the cigarette. He removed it from his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the air. "And I told you to call me Angelus."

"You can relive you glory days on your own time," She retorted. "Don't expect me to indulge you. Now what do you want?"

"I'd like a snack," he said frankly. "I ate a hooker in Chinatown, but you know how it is—an hour later, and you're hungry again."

Kate felt bile rise into her mouth. She remembered her father, and all the times that she had helped this _thing_. "So you're finally showing your true colors, are you?"

"Well, you see, it's not actually that simple," Angel said. "The fact is, I'd been in this relationship that had been holding me back for a long time—"

"You know what?" She snapped. "I really don't care. I've heard it before, down at the precinct, and I'm sure I've heard it better."

His grin didn't falter. "Oh, now you've gone and hurt my feelings. I was just going to kill you, but now I think I'll keep you for a month or two. Use you as a snack around the lair. Try out some torture techniques that I've just been itching to use since electricity was discovered." His grin grew broader and more feral, and he began to stalk toward her. "Sound like fun?"

She thrust her cross out at him, and began to advance on _him_. She wasn't one of the helpless innocents that he was used to terrorizing, god damn it. It was time for him to learn some fear. "Know what sounds like fun to me? Staking you like I should have long ago."

Angel backed away, but he didn't lose his grin. "Oh, dear," he said in a high, mocking, old-lady's voice, laying his free hand on his cheek in a 'Well I Never' pose. "She has a weapon. Whatever shall I do? Oh, wait." The smile dropped from his face, and he flicked his cigarette away. "That's right." He pulled a nine-millimeter out of the depths of his leather jacket. "I have a weapon, too."

Kate barely had time to gasp in shock before one bullet shattered her left knee, and the other slammed into her right shoulder. She crashed to the ground, and her cross skittered away from her strengthless grasp. She kept her grip on the holy water, but Angel was on her in an instant, and he kicked it away.

"You're not dealing with Soul Boy this time, you arrogant little sow," he snarled, his demonic face showing through.

"Who the hell…" She gasped. "Is Soul Boy?"

He waved the question away. "I'll go into the details of just how stupid you are later."

He grabbed her uninjured leg and dragged her to a manhole cover halfway down the alley. The pain was searing, and it left her too weak to try to escape when he released her to pry up the cover. Once he had done so, he crouched on the edge and peered down into the darkness. Then he reached over and spun her around, then rolled her over so that she, too, was looking down into the sewer.

"Think you can make it down there?" He asked.

"I can't walk, you moron."

"You know," He said mildly, "You _need_ to learn some respect. But don't worry," he reached over and patted her injured shoulder. She bit back a scream. "I'm just the one to teach you."

He stood, struck another match, lit another cigarette, shook the match out, and took a long drag. "You know what?" He said.

"What?" She snarled.

"Remember how I said that I'd burn your neighbors if you didn't come down here?"

"Yes I do, and believe me, I never would have—"

"Well, I've thought about it, and I don't recall ever _promising_ to let them live if you _did_ come."

With that, he picked her up by the wrist of her uninjured arm. She wasn't a short woman, but when he stood to his full height and extended his arm, her feet couldn't touch the ground. He turned and swung her out over the open manhole. "Wait, what are you doing? No!"

With a grin, he let her go.

There was an eruption of exquisite agony at the bottom. Bright spangles of color burst behind her eyelids, then everything went black.

--

Standing back up at the top of the ladder, Angelus looked down and grinned. Then he took another deep drag off his cigarette and flicked it into the window he had broken out of the basement of Kate's building.

Still grinning, he leaped down into the dark tunnels below.

--

The Benton Arms apartment building exploded at 11:42 PM, April 23, 2001. Witnesses on the street described an explosion that eviscerated the lower three floors of the seven-story building. The fire was first attributed to a gas leak, but that verdict was changed to Arson—and murder—when it was discovered that the fire escape had been carefully sabotaged.

Of the building's one hundred fifty six residents, sixty-eight made it out alive.

**Getting Some Air**

_Eight hours earlier_

When the far-flung members of the Scooby Gang had been kidnapped by the fallen angel Belial, they had apparently been transported to Sunnydale in their own vehicles. This made their necessary exodus to LA that much simpler.

After a few hours of sleep to avoid exhaustion-related car accidents, they had all piled into their fleet of vehicles and taken to the freeway in a convoy. The only safe place for Angel and Spike was the back of Oz's van, so that was where they sat, along with Willow, Tara, and, of course, Oz himself. Joyce and Xander rode in the Summers family car, joined only by Anya. Meanwhile, Cordelia and Faith rode with Giles—"Hey, nice wheels, G." "Yeah, when did you get rid of your toaster oven with wheels?"—leaving Wesley to drive Angel's car home, accompanied by Buffy and Riley.

"Never tell him that I said this," Riley had said the first time he'd seen the car. "But that is just about the most incredible motor vehicle I have ever seen in my life." Then he had frowned. "But a vampire driving a convertible in a city famous for its sun? Doesn't that reveal a certain degree of self-hatred?"

Buffy and Wesley had just looked at each other uncomfortably.

--

"Hi, Gunn."

"Angel? Where are you? What happened to you guys? I got to the hotel and the place was all shot up—Wesley and Cordelia! Are—"

"They're okay. I'm the only one who got shot. We were captured."

"I figured that. What happened?"

"Well, we won—I guess—and everyone lived, and we're on our way home."

"Bringing any guests?"

"About a dozen."

"Don't do anything halfway, do you?"

"Listen. There's something more important. One of the bad guys escaped. He's an impostor of me, and he's headed your way."

"That's bad. How do we know when it's the real you?"

"Well, it's a long story, but I aged a few years while I was here. I have a few silver hairs now."

"That's a bit hard to notice from a safe distance at night."

"Right. Uh, how's this: don't let me come near unless I have Cordelia or Wesley with me, and they're holding a cross _in their hand_, so you know they're not vamped."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Good. Meet you at the Hyperion?"

"I'll be there."

"Good. See you then."

"See you then."

_Click._

Angel hit the _off_ button on his cell phone, and started to put it away, but Spike stopped him.

"Hold on a mo'. Aren't you forgetting something?"

Angel took a deep breath. The mere presence of his childe was enough to make him want to throw the van door open. "What do you want, Spike?"

"The Slayer's dad lives in LA, ya bleedin' ponce. Better check with mum to see if he's in harm's way or not."

Angel held out the phone. "You do it, Spike. Joyce and I have some issues to work out, and the less we talk the better."

Spike stared at the phone, then at Angel, then back at the phone. Then he rolled his eyes in disgust and took it.

--

There was silence in the Summers car, and there had been since departing Sunnydale. Joyce kept her eyes on the road and said nothing, while Xander sat in the back and alternated between staring silently out the window and clinging tightly to Anya. Suddenly, _In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida_ began playing from the front seat.

Joyce picked up her phone. "Hello?"

"Hey, mum."

"Spike?"

"Yeah. Listen, do you know if the Slayer's dad is in town right now? 'Cause if he is, we better call and warn him if we don't want to find him on the floor of the nancyboy's HQ. Angelus knows everything the poofter knew until they were separated, and that's just the sort of thing he likes best."

"No, he's on a business trip to New York." She paused. "This Angelus—he's really that vicious?"

"Mum, I hate to say this, 'cause I have a reputation of my own to uphold, but he's about the most vicious there ever was. Other vampires were afraid of him. Even old, powerful ones. Even his own _Sire_. We're in for a right nasty tussle, mum, make no mistake about it."

--

Faith and Cordelia sat on opposite sides of Giles's back seat. They had been silent since the trip began, breaking the silence only to argue with Giles over the choice of radio station. Despite some truly inspired pestering, the radio had stayed on the oldies station where it began.

He had turned it off entirely when "Eve of Destruction" came on.

"Hey, Queen C," Faith spoke up, breaking the long silence.

Cordelia smiled sadly. "No one's called me that for a long time."

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about…you know…"

"The elbow in the face?" Cordelia said. She watched Faith squirm for a moment before saying "Don't worry about it. I've had worse."

"You sure?"

Cordelia looked at her sternly. "_Wesley_ is the one you need to apologize to. Me, I was satisfied when you went to prison. If I'd still wanted revenge—which I didn't—I would have called it got when I saw you on those crystals. I've been there myself—"

"Impaled on crystals?" Faith asked incredulously.

"No, a rebar."

"Oh."

"So I know how it feels, and it more than pays back for one punch in the face."

Faith smiled. "Thanks. Now, did that rebar thing happen when I knew you?"

"Oh, it was senior year," Cordelia said. "It was a real…mess…" She trailed off into thoughtful silence.

"As for my part," Giles said from the front seat. "I agree with Cordelia. You never did anything to me, personally. And if you need to talk to someone in what is sure to be a trying time for you, then I am here to listen."

"What about Buffy?" Faith asked. "Won't she need you?"

Giles caught the undercurrent in the question. Perhaps there was some resentment left. More likely, Faith still didn't feel quite secure in her new place in the Scooby Gang. Surely it must seem to her like such affection could be taken away at any moment. Most likely, it always had been before. The thought broke his heart. Suddenly, he could barely remember her as the Slayer, a being of lethal power. Suddenly, she was just a girl who had been hurt, betrayed, and abandoned too many times. "Buffy is like a daughter to me," he answered carefully. "But a father can have more than one daughter."

She laid a hand on his shoulder, and when he glanced into the rear view mirror, he saw her wiping at her eyes. "Thanks, G," she said softly.

"Giles," Cordelia interrupted sharply. "There's a rest stop up ahead. Could you pull in?"

Giles sighed. "Yes, Cordelia."

--

It turned out that several other members of the Scooby Convoy also had calls of nature to answer. Joyce, the last one out of the Ladies' Room, commented on how quickly the younger women had been in and out.

"We spent years hanging out in graveyards fulla monsters all night, Mrs. S," Faith explained. "How long would _you_ want your pants around your ankles?"

"Although I think those bathrooms might have been scarier," Willow added.

"Agreed," Oz said as he joined the group.

"What're _you_ complaining about, wolf-boy?" Faith scoffed. "You can stand up."

"And I've never been more grateful for it."

It turned out that most of them, not having eaten since the previous evening, had other needs to be taken care of. The one restaurant that the rest stop had to offer—a McDonald's—suffered an immediate, if minor, rush. There was a momentary problem when Tara was told that this particular McDonald's didn't sell Garden Salads, but Oz offered to eat the meat bits out of a Chef's Salad, and all was well again.

They all decided to eat outside—if the two vampires sleeping in the van were any indication, Angelus probably wasn't causing any immediate damage at the moment.

Buffy, the first one out, had sat down at a table with her legs stretched to the other side to save at least one seat for Riley, when Cordelia approached.

"Can we talk?" Cordelia asked.

"No," Buffy snapped. "I know that I owe Angel at least three or four different apologies, and I'll do it. But right now, I'm still trying to get my head straight, so I don't need a Cordelia Chase 'Somehow This Is All Buffy's Fault' lecture."

"That's okay," Cordelia said, sitting down. "You're getting an entirely different lecture."

"The word 'no' means nothing to you, does it?" Buffy said. "It's a good thing you're not a man."

"Just listen, will you?" Cordelia said. "I only need a minute."

Buffy subsided, settling back and glaring. "Go on."

"Look, no one says you don't have a right to be angry," Cordelia said. "Hell, no one could really fault you if you _never_ forgave them."

Buffy's glare started to fade. "But…" She prompted.

"Remember Senior Year?" Cordelia said. "I refused to even listen to Xander's apologies for months. I wouldn't even come near you guys unless the world was at stake—and sometimes not even then. I didn't find out about the Sisterhood of Jhe until Angel told me about it sometime last year. And when I did come near you, I tried to hurt you as much as I could."

"That's true," Buffy agreed. "I do remember some bystanders getting caught in the crossfire."

"And I'm sorry about that, but I'm trying to get to my point."

"Which is?"

"I spent Senior Year alone. My Cordettes didn't want me back, and I rejected all of you. Because Xander and Willow hurt my pride."

"And your gut."

"And my gut. Look, my point is, they were genuinely sorry, but I wouldn't accept their apology, and it cost me. I spent senior year alone, rather than with some of the best friends that a person can have. People who would have stood by me even when I lost my money. I don't want the same thing to happen to you."

"Don't worry, it won't."

"You should talk to them now."

Buffy shook her head. "I can't."

"In case you don't remember," Cordelia said sternly, "We're going up against Angelus. We don't know if everyone's coming out."

"Then I'll have to live with the regret," Buffy said. "Right now, I am thirty-one flavors of messed up, and if I try to talk to them, I'll probably say or _do_ something that I'll regret even more. But I _will_ accept their apologies when they give them "

Cordelia considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough," she allowed. Then she glanced over her shoulder and noticed that the rest of the convoy was starting to filter out of the building in twos and threes. "Oh, no!" Cordelia leaped to her feet. "I can't be seen like this! I have a reputation to uphold!"

"A reputation for what?" Buffy smirked.

"Hating you," Cordelia retorted tartly as she turned toward another table.

"Cordelia?"

She turned halfway back. "Yes?"

"Thanks for caring."

Cordelia smiled, just a little bit sadly. "There are things that _make_ you care, Buff. And some of them have happened to me since you knew me. Still, you're welcome."

With that, she sat down at another table as the other members of the Convoy began to arrive.

**Two Hours Later**

_Six Hours Until the Blast_

_Taking Position_

Gunn was pacing the Hyperion lobby with his homemade axe in hand when Wesley and Cordelia led the Scooby Gang through the doors.

"So here it is," Cordelia was saying. "Base, sweet base."

A cloud of "Ooh"s, "Ahh"s, and "cool"s came from the Scooby Gang.

"Cordelia!" Gunn called, striding across the room, not quite allowing himself to run. "Wesley!" He looked them over carefully when he arrived. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"Quite all right," Wesley assured him. "As to what happened, it's quite a long story—"

"Taken hostage by a true devil." Cordelia said. "But we beat him."

"Maybe not so long," Wesley said as Gunn goggled at them both.

"You'll have to give me the details later. Where's Angel?"

"He had to take the sewer route," Wesley answered. "He should be here any minute."

Giles cleared his throat.

Wesley started. "Oh! Yes! I'm sorry. How rude of me. Everyone, this is our associate, Charles Gunn."

"Just call me Gunn."

Wesley then proceeded to introduce the others, and most returned the greeting politely. One, however, saw something that interested her. As the rest of the Sunnydale contingent dispersed to find seats in the lobby, Faith stepped up to Gunn."

"Where did you get that axe?" She asked. "I've never seen one like it before."

"Oh, this?" He held it up, looking surprised, as if he'd forgotten it was in his hand. "Some of my boys made it for me."

"They did a good job."

Gunn beamed.

It was then that Angel and Spike came up out of the basement. Spike surveyed the lobby, then barked out laughter. "Nice set-up, Peaches," He said. "How many rooms do you have here to brood all alone in?"

"Spike, your chip would let you fight back against me, so I'm not honor bound to not kill you. Now shut up."

Gunn pulled out a cross and handed it to Cordelia. Perplexed, she took it, and her confusion only heightened when he watched her for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction. "So that's the real Angel?" He asked, pointing.

"In the pale, room-temperature flesh." Cordelia answered.

Angel and Gunn met each other in the center of the room. Gunn looked Angel up and down. He was right; he had aged. Not much, just a line here and there. A silver hair mixed in among the dark-brown spikes. Not much at all. Except that Angel was supposed to be ageless.

"Man, what _happened_ to you?"

"Shot. A lot. Then beat up. Bad. Had to heal really fast, and it taxed my system a little."

"Oh."

Angel raised his voice "All of the rooms are unlocked," He said. "Why don't you all go settle in, and meet back here?"

--

Angel turned back to Gunn as the Sunnydale group dispersed. "Did you give all of your people the message about identifying the impostor?" He asked.

"Sure, sure. Now what's this 'impostor' thing all about?"

"What message?" Cordelia asked as she and Wesley joined the huddle.

Angel explained his method of signaling to allies that it was safe to approach.

Cordelia looked at Gunn. "So _that's_ why you—"

"Brilliant," Wesley said. "Who thought of it?"

Angel rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Wes." Then he turned back to Gunn. "You'd better get your people rallied and armed. Angelus—"

"Now he's the impostor, right?" Gunn interrupted.

The other three looked at each other. "I think it's time to give him those details now," Cordelia said.

Taking turns, they explained all that had happened during their 'trip' to Sunnydale, with Wesley throwing in a few explanations about the true nature of vampires.

"So," Gunn said when they were done speaking. "This Angelus is a pure-demon version of you." He pointed at Angel.

"That's right." Wesley said.

"That sounds bad."

"Doesn't get much worse," Cordelia agreed.

"And he's going to start collecting followers," Angel added. "An army, if he can manage it. We may or may not need their help, but your people are definitely going to need to be ready to defend themselves."

--

As Gunn departed, the other members of Angel Investigations turned back toward the lobby, to find Riley Finn sitting at the foot of the stairs.

"I think I'll go see if my books have any information on pure vampire demons," Wesley said quickly, heading for their makeshift reference library behind the checkin desk.

"I'll—uh—help him!" Cordelia said, taking off after him.

"Cowards," Angel muttered as he crossed the floor.

Riley was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "Hey, Big Man," he said as Angel arrived.

"Hi, Riley."

"Nice hotel you have here. How much did it set you back?"

Angel grinned. "Careful. That's the second nice thing you've said to me. It might get to be a habit." With that, he sat down on the stairs beside Riley. "And it didn't cost as much as you might think. It was run-down and abandoned and haunted by a Pseulak paranoia demon. The owner was glad to be rid of it."

They sat in silence for a moment, then Riley spoke up again. "Neither of us knows what's going to happen, or what we should do, do we?"

"Not a clue."

"So what now?" Riley asked. "Shake hands and may the best man win?"

Angel looked at the floor. "I think we both know who the best man for her is," He said.

Riley looked up at him sharply. "Who's that?"

Angel didn't look up. "I left so she could have a chance at a normal life. And if I'd had any say in it, you're just the kind of man I would have chosen for her. You're brave. Honest. Compassionate. You're a good man, and you can even fight at her side."

"Thanks," Riley murmured.

"You can give her sunlight, and children, and everything else that a normal life is supposed to have. All I can give her is darkness and—"

"Shut up."

Angel's head snapped up. He stared at in shock at the young man beside him.

"How old are you?" Riley demanded.

"Um…counting my time as a human, 274," Angel answered, dumbfounded.

"Then that's your excuse. But it won't work again. You run away or chase her off this time, she'll come after you with a stake. And you'll deserve it, too."

"Look, boy," Angel bristled. "I'm just trying to do the right thing, here, and—"

"It was the right thing when you had that demon inside you, waiting to get out if you ever..." Riley winced. "If she ever made you perfectly happy. But now it's time to reassess the situation."

"What's to reassess?" Angel asked "Most of my reasons still stand. I can't give—"

"Will you stop thinking about what you can and can't give her and start thinking about what she _wants_?" Riley snapped. "Bulletin, Big Man, but 'normal' isn't one of Buffy's options. Whatever gave you the idea that her life with me was 'normal'? She still sees more moonlight than sun, and as to children—can you imagine how vulnerable a third-trimester Slayer would be? How 'bout the Slayer's children _after _they're born?" He paused, waiting for an answer. Receiving none, he continued: "She's twenty. That's a grown-up in any era. In your day, she'd already be married with kids, running a household. Time to let her make some of her own decisions."

"Why are you _encouraging_ me like this?" Angel asked. "If you succeed, I become your rival."

"Part of it's the psychological training," Riley said. "I like to talk sense into people."

"It worked."

"Good." Then Riley sighed. "The other half is that I love her, and I want her to be happy. It would make _me_ happy if it was with me, but if it's with you, well, I'll find some way to survive." He smiled. "Just like you."

"What a mess."

"You said it."

"What are you two talking about?"

Both looked over their shoulders to see Buffy standing there, her hands on her hips.

"Oh, just trading death threats," Riley answered.

"And insults of each other's ancestry," Angel added. "Which is where I have an advantage, because I met most of his ancestry."

"Right," Riley said. "I just threatened to cut his limbs off, shove a red hot iron up his ass, and post him on the west side of a wall so he can watch the sun coming for him all day."

"And I just told him that his great-grandmother tupped every man and most of the horses in three parishes."

Buffy sighed and sat down on the steps above them. "You forgot to mention anything about crosses, or holy water, or cutting off his ears, nose, tongue, and dick," she said to Riley. "And _you_ forgot to mention that his great-grand_father_ was known as 'He-Who-the-Sheep-Fear'." She said to Angel. She got up and stepped between them, down the stairs, and into the lobby. "Honestly. Amateurs."

--

Oz heard the shower running in the room as he knocked on the door. Assuming that only one of them was showering, that gave him a fifty-fifty chance.

He was in luck. Someone on the other side of the door turned the knob, and swung it open.

Tara.

Good.

"Hey," he greeted her.

"Oh, Oz. Hello. I'm sorry, Willow's in the shower."

"That's okay. I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh," She looked surprised. "Okay."

"Mind coming out in the hall?" he asked. "I'm not at a place with Willow where I can see her naked anymore."

She nodded and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

"Sorry I tried to eat you the first time we met," he said without preamble.

"Oh, that," She said, a bit stunned by his directness. "That's okay. You weren't entirely yourself."

"Kind of the whole problem."

She smiled. "Seriously, it's okay. You did your best, and no harm came of it, and now it's in the past."

He smiled back. "You're quite the human, Tara."

It was then that he heard the water stop running in the shower. "She's done," he said. "Better go."

"Oz?" She asked as he turned to walk away.

He looked back over his shoulder. "Hm?"

As always, her nerves showed in her speech: she couldn't control her stutter. "Wh-when I f-first heard about you, I st-studied up on w-werewolves, and I r-read th-that in s-some ways, you're like real wolves. Is th-that t-t-true?"

Oz nodded. "More now, since I moved out of Sunnydale. The Wolf didn't like it there too much. I think it knew how bad a place it was."

She swallowed hard. "D-d-does th-that m-m-mean th-that you m-m-m-" She couldn't force the word out.

"Mate for life?" He finished. "Yes. But since its still not safe for her to be with me, I'm glad she's with you." With that, he walked off.

--

Anya dragged Xander into the hotel room, slammed the door behind them, and immediately began to attack his belt buckle.

"What are you _doing_?" He demanded, shocked.

"We are having some form or another of sex. Right now." She said in grim determination, moving from his now-open belt to the button of his jeans.

"This is neither the time nor the place," He argued, his temper starting to rise at her insensitivity.

"Too bad." She unzipped his zipper, and he grabbed her shoulders.

"Anya, I don't _want_ to."

She looked up at him defiantly. "That's why it's going to happen."

He straightened his arms and held her out away from him. "No, Anya. That's wrong. No means no, no matter who says it."

She brought her arms up between his and knocked them away from her shoulders. "I'm not going to sit here and let you wither!" She yelled. "Don't you think I noticed how little you ate at that McDonald's? You're acting like you've lost every friend you have!" Xander opened his mouth, probably to answer that he had, but Anya just continued on. "Sure, what you did was bad, but Buffy _said_ she'd forgive you if you apologized."

"Maybe," Xander said. "Maybe she will, but it'll never be the same between us. There'll always be something broken." He started to slump in on himself, but Anya reached out, gently pushed him against the door, and held him there.

"Maybe," she allowed. "I _think_ you're wrong, but I really don't know. That's why we're going to have sex."

"Do you know what a non sequitur is, honey?" Xander asked tiredly.

"I was a demon for more than a thousand years," she said. "And I've been a human for less than two. I don't get the subtleties yet. But I know someone whose heart is broken when I see one, and I am damn well going to show you that _I_ still love you. The only way I know how."

Xander could only stare in shock as she dropped to her knees in front of him.

--

_Knock, knock, knock_

"Just a moment," Joyce called as she sat up on the bed and grabbed some tissues out of her purse to wipe her eyes. "All right, come in," she said as she tossed the tissues into the wastebasket.

Giles opened the door, a concerned expression on his face.

"Hello, Rupert."

"Hello, Joyce," he said nervously. "I just thought I should, ehm, check in on you. See if you're all right."

She opened her mouth and drew in breath to lie, but the words evaporated with a sigh, and her head dropped. "No. I'm not."

"Would you like to talk about it?"

"I guess so."

He nodded, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind him.

"I don't know what there is to talk about, though," she said as he sat down on the bed beside her. "My daughter hates me. _Really_ hates me. I can't dismiss this as a temper tantrum over a missed curfew. I may have lost my daughter, and it's my own fault."

Few people ever heard such a declaration of utter defeat and misery. Giles was all too used to it. He'd been there himself, and he'd seen it in each of his charges at least once.

At least he knew how to handle it.

Giles reached out and patted Joyce's knee. "You haven't lost Buffy, and she doesn't hate you. She's furious with you, that I'll grant, but she still loves you very much, and she _will_ forgive you."

"How do you know that?" Joyce asked, still speaking into her own lap.

"Because Buffy has the most remarkably forgiving heart that I've ever encountered," he said. "She's forgiven Faith, who she _did_ hate. She forgave me for a crime _far_ worse than yours, and she has never mentioned it again. I have no doubt in my mind that she'll forgive you."

"Are you sure?" She asked.

"I'm sure. She's forgiven us all, mostly for sins that were far less well-intentioned than yours. But I think she's grown tired of being the first, and often the only one to apologize or forgive. I think you're going to have to make the first move."

Joyce sighed. "I just don't know where or how it all went so wrong. I was always just trying to protect her, to be a good mother."

Giles chuckled bitterly. "Welcome to the family, Joyce. We can't turn around without hurting each other, and our best intentions always seem to get us in the most trouble." Then he patted her knee again. "Come now. I think we'd best get back downstairs."

--

"Hey, Wes."

Wesley jumped, nearly dropping the book he was holding. He managed to suppress his yelp of surprise, however, and he took a moment to regain his composure and set the book down calmly before he turned to the speaker. She was leaning across the check-in counter. "Hello, Faith."

"Sorry about that. I thought you knew I was here."

"Quite all right."

"Was whatever you were reading that fascinating?" She asked.

"Yes, actually," he answered. "But I'll discuss it when everyone is together." He fixed her with a shrewd glance. "And I suspect that's not what you wanted to talk about, in any case."

"You got me, Wes," She said. "Mind if I step into your office?"

"Certainly," he answered. "Come have a seat."

She vaulted over the counter, landed smartly on her feet, and sauntered over to a chair.

Wesley paused for a moment to count the number of people he knew for whom such physical feats weren't even showing off. It was a depressing thought, and he quickly dismissed it. "So what was it you wanted to talk about?" He asked.

"Well," she began, "It's no secret that we're gearing up for a fight that some of us might not come out of, so I was just hoping—"

"To make your peace?" Wesley finished.

"Yeah." She agreed. "See, I figure I hurt you more than anybody except maybe B, so I wanted to make sure I talk to you while I had the chance."

Wesley sat down in the chair across from her with a sigh. "Once a month," he said. "I have a nightmare about what happened in that apartment. That's down from several times a night right after it happened."

Faith looked stricken.

"Yesterday, when Belial started singing, he sent me back there. That was my Hell."

"Wes, I'm so sorry. I know I can never make it up—"

He leaned forward and put a finger to her lips. "Hush. I'm not finished. What made it my hell was knowing that I deserved it." He withdrew his finger, but she still said nothing. She was left staring at him and gaping. "I failed you in so many ways, Faith. The Watchers' Council as a whole did—leaving you in that cheap hotel by yourself when we could, at the very least, have provided decent lodgings and supervision for you. But no, the Council doesn't see the Slayers as teenage girls or even as soldiers, merely weapons. And I was too blind to even think of it. Then you had your accident with Deputy Mayor Finch, and I was more concerned with enforcing the Council's edicts and proving myself a better Watcher than Mr. Giles than I was with you at all. And I managed to interfere at just the moment when someone might have been able to help. So, in a way, everything that followed was my own fault."

Faith stared at him for a long moment after he finished. "Are you completely ape-shit?" She demanded at last. "I was a big girl. I made my own decisions. I screwed it all up on my own. Ask B: I was all 'Want, take, have' even before the shit went down. Even if you did screw up, nothing you did deserved what I did to you. That was just plain wrong."

"And you redeemed yourself last night," Wesley said. "Any debt that you had to me is paid."

"Well, you don't owe me nothing, either," she said. "If it's up to me, we're five by five."

"Done."

"Huh?"

Wesley held out his hand. "All debts are paid and we start at even: five by five."

Faith spit into her own hand and held it out.

Wesley hesitated, quickly drew his hand back, spit into it, and held it out again.

They shook.

Cordelia, who had been watching from the shadows of the shelves, turned away. "Ewww," she said. That was gross.

Still, she couldn't help but smile.

--

"So where do we go from here?" Buffy asked.

It had taken a little over an hour for the group to settle in and reconvene in the lobby. Now they sat about on the couches and chairs, looking expectantly at the Angel Investigations group. This was, after all, their territory.

"The first thing we need is information," Wesley said. "We have no idea where Angelus is, or what he's doing."

"Merle?" Angel asked.

Wesley nodded. "Merle."

"Caritas?" Angel asked, wincing.

Wesley nodded again, firmly. "Caritas."

"You mean Angel's going to have to sing?" Cordelia asked, grimacing.

Wesley took a deep breath. "He may. The problem of Angelus is, after all, a deeply personal one for him."

"Is he really that bad?" Giles asked, amused.

"He once sent a Rinmak demon fleeing from the room," Wesley responded.

"Rinmak?" Anya said. "But they kill people by screeching so loud—" She paused, then turned to Angel. "Wow. You must be really awful."

The group burst out laughing and Angel, glad of the tension breaker—even at his own expense—let it ride for a minute or two before waving it down. "Okay, okay, enough, enough."

"What is a 'Caritas' anyway?" Buffy asked.

"It's hard to explain," Angel said. "You'll see when we get there."

"Yeah, that's brilliant," Spike scoffed, lighting a cigarette. "All of us run off and leave the place all empty. Interested in finding out what neat traps Angelus leaves for us when we get back? That the plan?"

"That's true," Riley agreed. "We can't leave our base unprotected."

"We can't split up our forces, either," Buffy said.

"We may have to," Riley said.

Buffy shook her head vehemently. "No. That's just what he's waiting for." She'd been tricked that way one too many times. She wasn't going to leave her friends unguarded again. Not for any reason.

"Actually, I agree with Buffy," Wesley weighed in. "We dare not divide our strength. Angelus would be dangerous enough if he was still just a vampire—"

"But he's not," Giles continued, straightening in his seat, his face growing grim as he realized what Wesley was getting at. "He's a pure vampire demon. And of all the pure demons, the vampire demons—"

"Were the last to be driven out," Wesley finished grimly. "And they inflicted a curse on humanity that has lasted from that day 'til this."

There was a moment of silence as the group considered this.

"Wow," Anya said finally. "And back in my demon days, I always thought of you guys as weak, pathetic half-breeds," She said to Spike and Angel. "I never considered your heritage. I'm sorry."

The two vampires stared at her, utterly at a loss.

" 'Salright," Spike said at last.

"We may have a solution," Willow said, raising one hand and taking Tara's with the other one. Everyone turned to look at them. "We found—actually Tara found—this spell." She grinned. "Tell 'em, honey."

Tara blushed. "It's a protection spell for travelers," she explained. "It allows someone to just declare the place where they're staying to be their home."

"That way, vampires need to be invited in," Willow finished. "Maybe Angelus is too strong, but even if he breaks it down, we'll know." Her face fell. " 'Cause we'll both get really big, nasty, excedrin-written-all-over-it headaches, but that's better than coming home to find him waiting for us."

The rest of the group looked around at each other. There were nods and murmurs of "that works" and "sounds like a plan."

"All right then," Buffy said. "Let's do it."

Wolfram & Hart

"My boy is coming."

Lindsey looked up from the paperwork on his desk to the couch across the room where Darla was lounging. "What's that?"

"My boy. He's on his way here. Right now."

Lindsey hit a button on his intercom. "Special case number 368-BK is on his way to my office for a personal interview." Good. Let the self-righteous bastard try to sneak in. He'd find them ready for him.

--

"Hey, Lindsey—or should I say Lefty?" Angelus said as he strode into the room a few minutes later. "I have a job for you." He stopped short. "Hm. Looks like you've got some company."

It did, indeed. Lilah Morgan and Bryce Hammond had joined Lindsey in his office, as had roughly half a dozen security guards.

"Your co-workers can stay," Angelus said. "I'm here to make a proposal, and they should hear it, too. But get rid of the rent-a-cops before I kill them all."

Bryce Hammond smiled his gentle old man's smile. "Angel, I don't think you quite understand the situation. Each of these men is trained to deal with supernatural intruders, and they're armed with stakes, crosses, and bottles of holy water. They're not the ones whose lives are in danger here."

"Crosses. Hm." Angelus began to pace, stroking his chin. "Stakes. Holy water. You humans have such faith in your crosses, stakes, and holy water. As long as you have them, you think you're safe. It's an understandable mistake, of course. All of the vampires you've encountered are stupid, primitive beasts, and you think we're all like that. You're wrong, of course. I'm planning to work with you, so I'm going to give you one last chance. Get them out of here, or you're going to have to hire and train six new security guards."

"Take him," Hammond said negligently.

The guards took a step forward, pressing the buttons on their batons to release the spring-loaded stakes. Angelus's hand blurred as he snatched something from his trench coat. The room suddenly exploded in sharp blasts of sound and light. The three lawyers threw themselves to the floor behind Lindsey's large oaken desk.

The explosions ended as suddenly as they began, and all that remained was a sharp-smelling smoke hanging in the air.

Lindsey peeked out from under his desk. The six security guards lay on the floor, their blood soaking into his expensive carpet.

Angelus stood in the midst of them, blowing the smoke away from the barrel of a handgun. "I love this thing," he said gleefully as he holstered it back under his trench coat.

_Clap. Clap. Clap._

"Bravo. _Bra_vo."

Angelus turned to the source of the clapping, and his eyes and his mouth both gaped. "Darla?"

"Quick, efficient, brutal—I'm impressed. Maybe there's more hope for you than I thought."

"But…you're dead."

"I was," she said, honey dripping from her words. "Now I'm back. These helpful little humans brought me back so I could see my boy again." She traced her fingers along his jawline. He stiffened at her touch.

"I'm not your boy anymore, Darla," he said, staring straight forward.

"I know, but you could be again. You've just shown that my boy's still in you, closer to the surface than you ever—"

"Touch my mind, Darla. Then you'll see why your boy is never coming back."

Lindsey had cautiously risen to his feet, and Bryce and Lilah were crouching, peering over the desk, so they all saw what happened next.

Darla touched her fingertips to both of Angelus's temples and frowned in concentration for a moment. Then her eyes flew wide and she stumbled back away from him. "So-s-so _dark_!" She moaned. "S-so _cold_! What _are_ you? _What are you_?"

"I am what is to come," Angelus said, spreading his arms grandly. "I am the Alpha, and the Omega. I am the beginning and the final product of the vampire race." Then he grinned coldly. "And I don't need you anymore"

A gleaming black tentacle punched through Angelus's wine-colored silk shirt and struck like a snake, spearing into Darla and hurling her across the room, pinning her to the wall.

Darla's eyes bulged and her mouth opened and closed like a suffocating human, desperately sucking at air that won't come. "_Guchh…ughh"_ She gagged.

"Oh, yes," Angelus shouted in rapture. "I've had humans since I got free, but this—a master vampire—a twice-born, 400-year-old demon—this is…ambrosia! This is magnificent!"

Darla clutched spasmodically at the tentacle, hunching and gasping, trying to pull it free. Her face came up, and it was withering, aging, as if the lost 400 years were finally claiming her. The flesh melted off her bones and her dress flapped and billowed like a sail. Her limbs became skeletal and her eyes sunk into her skull.

"Yes!" Angelus cried. "Yes! Give it to me!"

Darla's skin turned a dry, brittle gray and cracked. "No," she gasped. "Please. Don't send me back there…not again."

Angelus laughed. "Pathetic. You heard those very words so many times yourself, and you laughed each time. I'd hoped that you'd show a little more guts when it was your turn."

She stared at him, across the room, stared into those burning cold eyes. "No…"

With a grin of pure, demonic hunger, Angelus lunged forward. The tentacle bit deeper, and Darla's wail trailed off into forever as her dust crumbled to the floor a second time.

The three lawyers looked helplessly at each other. Darla had been their tool, their bargaining chip, their weapon. Now they were defenseless.

Angelus turned toward them. His shirt hung in shreds, and they could see what had been hidden beneath it.

"Oh, my God," Lilah gasped weakly, stumbling backward and staring in blind horror.

"I think it's a bit late for you to call on Him, don't you think Lilah?" Angelus said, as he started to advance.

"Y-you're not Angel," Hammond said. "What the hell are you?"

"The name's Angelus," he replied.

"Well, then," Lindsey said, stepping forward. "When you came in here, you said you had a job for us. Far be it from us to turn down a client. What can I do for you, Mr. Angelus?" He stood fast as the thing that looked like a larger man arrived and leaned across the desk toward him. Angelus was a predator. He could smell fear, and it excited him to the hunt. _Be strong, and we just might live through this._

Angelus grinned in his face. "I like you, Lefty. You've got guts. They'll take you far in the world." Two tentacles suddenly lashed out. Lindsey swallowed hard and steeled himself against Lilah and Bryce's screams, and the hideous sucking sounds. He knew his own life depended on it. "See?" Angelus continued. "It got you the job while your two compatriots there were eliminated." He reached out—with a hand this time—and patted Lindsey on the cheek. "Now, there's no need to stand on ceremony between us. Angelus is fine. The job is simple: I just need you to make a few phone calls while I run out real quick and send a message."

Caritas

9:30 PM

_Two Hours_

"_This_ is Caritas?" Buffy exclaimed. "A _karaoke_ bar?"

"That was my first reaction, too," Angel muttered.

"It's a sanctuary," Wesley explained. "There are spells laid on it to make violence impossible. That makes it a good place for us to meet our informant."

"I think it looks _neat_," Willow chirped, taking Tara by the hand and leading the way down the steps.

"The karaoke serves another purpose," Wesley explained as the rest of the group followed the two witches down the steps. "The proprietor of Caritas is a demon named—well, actually, he prefers to simply be called the Host—and he can read people's auras and help guide them toward their destiny. But they have to sing first, so the soul will be open."

Buffy shuddered. "Sounds like fun."

"Might come in useful, though," Riley said. "I think we have a few things we could use some guidance for."

"That we do," Angel sighed. "That we do."

--

Gunn was waiting for them when they entered the bar, as was the Host. The spell had taken some time, and the group had decided to walk/patrol their way over, so they'd probably been waiting for a while.

Gunn drew the Angel Investigations group aside as the Host effusively greeted the Scooby Gang and guided them to a cluster of tables in a back corner. He seemed genuinely concerned with their welfare, offering them free food and (non-alcoholic) drinks. It was only when they bothered to look around that they found they'd been placed in a relationship counselor's version of assigned seating. Buffy sat at a table with Riley and one empty chair. Willow sat with Oz and Tara , while Giles, Joyce, Anya, and Xander all kept each other company. Faith was sat by herself at a table with three empty chairs, a basket of buffalo wings, and an assurance that "they'll be here in a minute, honey."

Spike refused to be visibly associated with the Sunnydale crew in any way. He sat down at the bar and was delighted to discover that they served his all-time favorite, a concoction he referred to as an Irish Red: high-test whiskey and type AB positive.

--

"I already talked to Merle," Gunn told the other three members of Angel Investigations. "He doesn't know anything."

"How sure are you of that?" Angel asked. "He's tricked us before."

Gunn smirked bitterly. "I asked him about Angelus, and he looks at me like I've asked him where my house is. After he finishes explaining to me that I work for Angelus, I explain to _him _what's happened."

"How did he take that?" Angel asked, a grin of grim satisfaction on his face.

"Looked real scared, suggested that I leave the city, and bolted for the door," Gunn replied.

"That actually would be the course of wisdom," Wesley said.

"Well, no one ever accused us of being wise," Gunn shrugged.

"No, they never did," Cordelia agreed.

"I guess that leaves us with whatever guidance Lorne can provide," Wesley said.

"Which means Angel's going to have to sing," Cordelia groaned, covering her eyes.

"Will you knock it off?" Angel complained as they started back out toward the tables. "It's not like it's fun for me either, you know!" He called after them. He started to follow, but Gunn caught his arm.

"Wait a second," he said. "Before you go, what can you tell me about—what's her name—the brown-haired one who liked my axe?"

"Faith?" Angel said, surprised. "Why, are you interested?"

Gunn shrugged. "We seem to share some interests, and it's hard to find a girl like that."

"There's only one other like her in the world," Angel agreed.

"There you go, getting cryptic. What does that mean? A straight answer, if you can manage it."

_Okay, _Angel thought. _A straight answer you want? A straight answer you get._

"She's a Slayer," He answered bluntly.

"A Slayer?" Gunn asked.

Angel nodded.

"Like English told me about? The one girl in all the world?"

"Well, one of the two, right now. Buffy's the other. It's a little complicated."

"And she really has, what, superpowers? The strength and all that?"

Angel nodded. "She really does."

Gunn grinned. "Cool."

Angel scowled. "Yeah. She's powerful, and she's dangerous, and that's right up your alley. But there are some things that _aren't_ cool."

Gunn looked at him, his grin gone. He could tell when The Situation Is Now Serious. "Done some bad things, huh?"

Angel nodded. "That, and she has a few things to work through."

Gunn shook his head and grinned. "Do either of us even know anybody who isn't messed in the head or doesn't have a dark past to make up for?"

Angel thought about it for a moment. "Well—no, well maybe there's—no."

"Would we even know how to deal with someone who had their head straight?"

Angel grinned ruefully. "Probably not."

"Still, thanks for the 411. I'll watch my step."

Angel patted him on the shoulder as they started toward the tables. "That's all I was trying to accomplish." Then he spotted the tables where the rest of their group was seated. Cordelia and Wesley had joined Faith, leaving an empty seat beside the secondary Slayer herself. The other empty chair was beside Buffy.

"I'm going to kill Lorne," Angel muttered as they started across the room.

--

"Ladies and Gentleman and everyone else out there, we have a special treat for you tonight," Lorne announced from the stage. "Some celebrities from out of town. They come from a little town to the south of us, I'm sure you've all heard of Sunnydale, and we've got kind of a Broken Hearts club on tour from there with us tonight. Could all of you welcome the Slayers and the Sunnydale Slayerettes!"

The response was mixed, but enthusiastic all around. A group of Brakkens and Anomovics, apparently out for a bachelorette party, clapped and cheered. Any vampires present, of course, booed.

"Well, our cover's blown," Faith muttered to Wesley.

"Stealth wasn't really an option," He replied. "You can't take two Slayers, a werewolf, two powerful witches, and the world's only vampire with a soul anywhere and hope to sneak in. Our presence was detected the moment we entered the city."

"Glad to hear that," she muttered, settling back into her chair.

"Think one of you could step up here and grace us all with a song?" Lorne invited from the stage.

The Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations all looked at each other in blank panic.

"Don't look at me," Angel grumbled, settling into his seat on the opposite side of Buffy from Riley. "I'm not going first."

"Thank you," Cordelia said.

"I thought I told you to knock it off."

"Giles," Buffy hissed. "Think you could go up there and buy us all some time?"

"Certainly."

--

As Giles took the stage to polite applause and launched into Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away," several of the Scooby Gang's tables clustered into tight huddles.

"I need both of you to sing," Buffy said.

Angel winced. "Are you sure, Buffy? It's really not pretty."

"Then I need you to join Spike at the bar," she said. "I need at least a few minutes alone with each of you."

Riley and Angel looked at each other. Then they looked at the bar, where Spike had started on his second Irish Red. Then they looked back at each other.

"Does he have any Garth Brooks?" Riley asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Angel said. "And I think there's a few new songs I can try that might not go so badly…"

--

Giles left the stage to much more enthusiastic applause.

Riley sprang up almost as soon as the watcher was done singing. He was not a man given to long contemplation. A decision had been made; best to act on it before any sign of stage fright set in.

It turned out that the Host had several Garth Brooks songs. Riley decided against "Friends In Low Places"—maybe later. He almost went with "The American Honky-Tonk Bar Association", then decided that he didn't want to announce "Hello, I am a hillbilly" to the LA supernatural underworld.

He decided on "The River"_._ A bit sappy, perhaps, but not as difficult as "Standing Outside the Fire", and he really didn't feel up to "Two of A Kind, Working On a Full House" right now.

He took a deep breath as the music started to play and the text started to scroll on the screen. He didn't need it.

"You know a dream is like a river…"

--

Angel turned away from the stage, back to Buffy. "He's not bad," he admitted.

Buffy smiled, a bit sadly. "You know, the two of you are starting to make a regular habit of saying nice things about each other."

"Uh-oh. Can't have that. I'll have to start insulting his lineage again right away."

She chuckled and they sat in silence for a moment, but just a moment, before he said "This song isn't really that long—what was it you wanted to talk about?"

Buffy nodded. Best cut to the chase—there wasn't enough time to lead up to anything. "First of all, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for last night. It was crazy—I was crazy. I know there's no excuse, but—"

"Don't even worry about it," Angel interrupted. "Those weren't your natural reactions. Oh, I'm sure you would have been furious, but you wouldn't have been trying to _kill_ anybody if it weren't for Belial's influence."

She looked up at him doubtfully. "Are you sure?"

He laid his hand on hers. "I have witnesses who'll back me up on this—he put some mystical additives into your tranquilizer dart. It was really subtle, but he was controlling you." He gripped her hand more tightly. "And you broke loose to save me. That's not just love, Buffy. That's a miracle."

"Love is a miracle."

He smiled. "Yeah. I'd agree with that."

Her own answering grin was rueful. "Then I have too many miracles in my life. Who would've thought it was possible?"

He remembered Riley up on the stage, and released her hand. Strange how, even after all this time, the rest of the world vanished whenever he was with her. "Was there anything else?"

"Yeah," her voice hardened slightly. "Yeah, actually there was. All of that stuff Belial was saying—how much of it was true?"

For the second time that night, he decided that bluntness was the best policy. "He had the facts right," he confessed. "But he gave it Satan's own editorial spin."

"Okay," she said, her voice hardening further. "Here's your chance to explain." She glanced up at the stage. "Better hurry. I think Riley's wrapping up."

"It's like I said last night. Every decision—and every screwup—I've made has always been because I love you. I can tell you the whole story of the day I was human some other time, but during that day I discovered that you would die if I didn't have my strength. If I wasn't a Warrior."

"And let me guess: you just went ahead and took care of it. You had whoever you had undo the day, undo it without even talking to me. Without hearing me mention Xander, Riley, Giles, and Wesley—none of them have super strength, and they help. You just had a day of my life unmade without even consulting me."

Angel held out his hands. "I'm 274 years old, Buffy. For about 250 of those years, that was the kind of thing that was expected. All I can say is I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" She sighed and deflated, her shoulders dropping. "For giving up everything you've ever wanted to protect me? Yeah, I have a right to be angry."

"You have a right to feel any way you want."

"Oh, stop." She stared into her Coke for a moment. "And you're my husband," she said after that moment had passed, not looking up.

"I guess I am," he said.

Riley had finished, and he was descending from the stage, accompanied by yips and yeehas from the bachelorette party.

"What are we going to do?" she asked, shaking her head.

"I don't know," he said, patting her hand as he rose to his feet. "But I talked to Riley this afternoon, and we both love you enough to want you to be happy, even if it can't be with us." He grinned. "He also pointed out that my age excuse will only work once, and it's time to let you make some of your own decisions. So whatever you decide. That's what we'll do."

"Great. No pressure at all."

He shot one last rueful grin at her as he headed for the stage. "Sorry."

--

Angel was a little surprised, but pleased, that Lorne had both of the songs he was hoping for.

When he pointed at the song list, Lorne put his hand over the microphone. "Are you sure?" He said. "Don't you want something…shorter?"

"Just trust me on this one," Angel replied. "I think I may be on to something."

"But aren't they a little—I don't know—close to home?"

"That's the point. I need some answers on both issues, and I need them fast."

"Okay, big guy, it's your funeral." He took his hand off the microphone. "Ladies and gentleman, we have tonight one of our semi-regulars. You've all heard of him: Angel, the vampire with a soul. Tonight, he wants to make a little change-up from his usual repertoire." With that, he stepped out of the way and handed the microphone to Angel.

"Thank you," Angel said. "Some of you here have heard me sing before. Before I started, I just wanted to thank you for not fleeing the room. But something occurred to me as I was sitting out there in the audience tonight: maybe the reason I have so much trouble is because I'm trying to sing outside my style. Tonight, I'm going to correct that mistake."

He nodded to Lorne, who hit a button. The first notes of Meatloaf's "Original Sin"began to growl out of the speakers.

"I've been lookin' for an original sin…"

--

Riley sat down in the seat that Angel had just vacated.

"You did great," Buffy said by way of greeting.

"Thanks," he said. "I didn't think you were paying that much attention."

"Not that much," she admitted, looking guilty. "But I did look up once in a while, and you were doing good then."

He chuckled, then turned serious again. "So what were you talking about."

"Oh, things. Stuff. I apologized for beating him up last night, he explained what Belial was talking about. That kind of thing."

"Apologized?" Riley said. "But Belial said he was controlling you."

"So Angel told me," Buffy said, pleased to have independent confirmation. It would be just like Angel to lie about something like that to make her feel better. Then she leaned forward, meeting Riley's eyes. "He _also_ told me that you gave him a little talking-to today. Something about his 'age excuse' only working once, and letting me make my own decisions."

He nodded. "Yeah, that's true."

"Thanks."

He shrugged in a way that she had long since learned meant 'Shucks ma'am, 'tweren't nothin'.' "I'm a psychologist. It's my job." He paused. "So. Have you _made_ any decisions?"

She heaved a deep sigh and looked down at the table. "No."

He sighed, too, and joined her in contemplating the table.

They sat like that, unspeaking, through a verse of Original Sin. Finally, Buffy spoke up again. "I don't throw away lovers like old shoes, Riley. I'm not going to just forget everything we've been through together, and everything you've done for me."

"I didn't do those things to obligate you."

"I know. That's why I love you."

She looked up, then, and he raised his eyes to meet hers. The tears he saw standing in them tore his heart, but he realized that nothing he could do would help. He was, after all, part of the problem.

"But he's my husband, Riley. Belial wasn't lying about that. And I love him, too."

With a gusty sigh, Riley sat back in his chair, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. "Mexican standoff," he sighed.

"Mexican standoff?" she asked, looking at him quizzically.

He pointed at his temple, cocking his thumb. "Guns to each other's heads. Safeties off, finger on the trigger. A no-win situation. It's probably racist, but I've watched too many old Westerns."

"What do you do in the army when you have a no-win situation?" she asked, leaning on the table.

"Call for evac."

"Sounds like a good idea," she said, sitting back in her chair.

He opened his eyes. "Huh?"

She pointed up to the stage, where there had been a pause while the Host stepped up to announce that Angel would be doing a second song, Meatloaf's "Bat Out of Hell". "Let's just relax and watch the show. Tearing our hair out won't give us the answer. Especially when we have more important things to worry about."

Riley nodded. "I hope this…Host fella can get us the intel we need."

Buffy's eyes lit up. "Maybe I should sing," she said.

Riley chuckled. "You've got a while to wait. This is Meatloaf. The man doesn't have a single song less than ten minutes in length."

After a verse worth of listening, Buffy remarked "You know, he's not half bad. I don't see what all the fuss was about."

"Look at the shock on Cordelia, Gunn, and Mr. Wyndham-Pryce's faces," Riley said, pointing at the Angel Investigations table. "I'm betting that this is a bit of a change."

--

Nearly fifteen minutes later, Angel descended from the stage to thunderous applause and the hoots and whistles of the half-drunken brakkens and anomovics. Rather than returning to the Scooby Gang's seats, he approached the bar, where Lorne was standing with a glass of bourbon on the rocks pressed to his forehead.

"I have _never_ seen lovelines as tangled as yours," Lorne moaned as Angel leaned against the bar beside him.

"We can talk about our love lives later," Angel said impatiently.

"Maybe if the little lady would get up there and sing," Lorne mused.

"Later," Angel interrupted. "Did you get anything about Angelus from the first song?"

Lorne's face turned serious. "Yes, I did. In fact—"

Across the room, Cordelia shot to her feet, clutching her head, and screamed.

Angel was only halfway across the room when she started to collapse, but Faith had already caught her and gently lowered her to the floor as the rest of the group leaped to their feet. Riley and Buffy immediately started to handle crowd control, keeping the sudden press of curious demons back.

Faith, the only one present who was uninformed about Cordelia's powers, was in a panic.

"What is it?" She asked, desperately trying to hold the thrashing visionary down. "What's wrong?" She looked desperately up at Wesley. "Is Angelus doing this?"

"No," he said, dropping to one knee at Cordelia's other side and pulling his jacket off. "She's having a vision." He shoved his rolled jacket under Cordelia's head. "Just hold her, she'll be better in a moment."

"Fire,"

"What's that?" Wesley asked, looking down sharply. Cordelia had stopped thrashing.

"Fire," she repeated.

That was the moment Angel arrived, Lorne close on his heels.

"Is she all right?" He asked.

"Fire!" She said again, reaching out to Angel.

He knelt and took her hand. "Just take it—"

She grabbed his hand and used it to pull herself into a sitting position. "Fire, Angel, fire! He's going to blow up a building!"

"Got an address?" Gunn asked.

"I do," Lorne answered, scribbling on a cocktail napkin. "I got this from your aura," he said, handing it to Angel. "It was during the first song, and there was a feeling of imminent disaster. This is probably it."

Angel looked at the napkin. "Oh, merciful Christ," he gasped. Then he jumped to his feet and pulled Cordelia to hers. "We need to move," he said, whirling toward the door.

"Long way?" Gunn asked as the group fell in behind him.

"Across town," Angel said. He tossed the folded napkin over his shoulder.

Wesley caught it and opened it. "Dear God," he said.

"What is it?" Cordelia asked.

"This is Kate's address."

_Time's Up_

Gunn's truck roared through the city. Cordelia and Joyce were crammed into the cab with him, while the rest rode in the back and cursed the fact that they'd chosen to walk to Caritas.

Most of the people in the back sat or crouched, holding on as best they could, but the Warriors were standing. Buffy stood between Riley and Angel at the front of the truck bed, where all three of them held onto Gunn's roof lights. Angel's face was grim and determined, and he leaned down low over the cab, ready to pounce. Buffy, on the other hand was almost smiling, and she was standing straighter, letting the wind blow in her face and whip her hair behind her like a banner. Riley _was _smiling. Broadly. It had been too long since he'd done this. There were no pick-ups in that Gucci-lined suburb he'd been living in, and he hadn't realized just how much he'd missed them. Funny what reminds you of home. Hell, there was even a gun rack, even if that was an axe hanging from it. If this business wasn't so serious, he would throw back his head and whoop.

Faith and Spike didn't bother to hold onto anything. They simply stood in the middle of the truck bed, riding the swerving vehicle like the Banzai Pipeline, passing a bottle of Jim Beam back and forth between them and howling.

Suddenly, Angel started to growl. His lips skinned back from his teeth, and with each snarl, those teeth lengthened and sharpened. His brow grew more and more ridged, and his eyes shone a brighter shade of wolf-yellow.

Buffy noticed. "What is it?" She called, shouting to make herself heard over the engine and the wind.

"We're getting close," He growled. "I can feel him again. I can see what he's doing—oh, God, I can see what he's planning!"

Gunn crested one final hill, shot across an intersection and screeched to a halt in front of the Benton Arms. Angel vaulted the cab and landed on the sidewalk in a hunting-panther crouch, his demon face fully manifested. He swung his head from side to side for a moment, as if trying to catch a scent, then his head snapped toward the alley beside the building.

The other Scoobies followed his gaze, and Gunn flipped on the lights in the overhead rack, just in time to reveal Angelus dropping someone into an open manhole. He turned toward them, grinned, and took a drag on a cigarette.

"No!" Angel shouted, launching himself toward the pure demon. Buffy and Faith were over the cab and only a few steps behind him, with their less athletic comrades pouring out of the truck behind them.

Still grinning, Angelus flicked his cigarette away and dropped into the manhole after whoever he'd thrown.

Angel abruptly reversed direction, spinning on his heel and running back toward the rest of the group, waving his arms and shouting "No! Run! He's—"

That was all he got out before the basement of the Benton Arms exploded, sending up a fireball that engulfed the bottom three floors.

Most of the group was still in or around Gunn's truck, so they either dropped to their bellies in the truck bed, or threw themselves to the ground behind it.

Angel was lifted and thrown by a searing blast of air. He went limp and let it carry him, rolling when he landed. He came to rest on his belly, covering his head with his arms. Glass, wood, and bits of brick rained down around him.

Faith and Buffy allowed the same blast of air to knock them over, falling backward and shielding their faces with their arms.

Miraculously, none of the Scooby Gang or Angel Investigations were hit by any large debris. Pieces of the building, the furniture and appliances within it, and even its inhabitants rained down into the street, but the worst any of them suffered were a few bruises or a nick or two from flying glass.

Angel was back on his feet as soon as the initial blast was over, racing back toward the fire. Unfortunately, he was helpless to approach any closer than thirty feet or so before the heat drove him back. He tried to push against it, but he felt his skin begin to sear, and he had to back away.

Then Buffy and Faith were there, pulling him back.

"What are you doing?" Buffy yelled over the roar of the fire. "You can't go in there!"

"There are _people_ in there!" He yelled back. "He's blocked the exits—they can't get out!"

"Oh, _shit_," Faith cursed, staring in horror. Then an idea hit her. "Look," she pointed. "The buildings are close together. One of us can jump that alley easy. We could go up the building next door, jump across to the roof, and get whoever we can out that way. "

Buffy nodded. "Good plan." She then turned to the arriving Scoobies. "Has anyone called 911 yet?" She asked.

"Cordelia," Wesley answered, pointing to where the visionary in question stood beside Gunn's truck, her cell phone pressed to her ear.

"Good," Buffy said. Then she turned to Willow. "Can you summon water?" she asked.

"Yeah, I can, but not enough to put out something like this," Willow said, staring helplessly.

"I know. But can you hose us down?"

Willow stared at her in disbelief for a moment before saying "Yeah. Sure. I can do that."

Spike was a step behind Willow. "What do you need _that_ for, Slayer? What're you doing?"

"We're going in," Angel announced. "And we need everyone without superpowers to stand back."

"You'll need more than just three people, Big Man," Riley said, pulling a bandana out of his pocket and wrapping it around his face as he stepped forward.

"I'm in, too," Gunn agreed, pulling out a bandana of his own.

"Anyone got some handkerchiefs?" Buffy asked. "Faith and I need to breathe, too."

Giles and Wesley immediately offered theirs.

"Hey, Gunn, got that cool axe with you?" Faith asked. "We might need it."

"It's in the truck," he answered, turning and dashing for it.

"Okay," Angel surrendered. "Riley and Gunn, but no others."

"No others?" Riley asked, looking at Spike. All other eyes turned to the blond vampire.

Spike backed away, shaking his head. "Uh-uh. Put it out of your mind, mate. I came here for the violence, and I'll join you for that, but I'm not running into a fire. Bugger that."

Most of the humans looked disgusted, but Angel just nodded. He understood. His own demon started howling in terror whenever he even looked at the burning building. All vampires are afraid of fire to some degree.

Buffy took Tara by the shoulder as Willow prepared to summon the water. "I need you and Willow to keep an eye out. We may need to go out a window or something, and even if we don't, there's liable to be jumpers. You're our safety net."

"Ok-k-k-" Tara paused, took a deep breath. "Okay. We can do that."

Then Buffy did a strange thing. She took Tara's head in her hands, pressed the larger girl's forehead to her own, and heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. "We're counting on you," Buffy said.

It was then that Tara realized that this young woman, this girl that she'd always thought of as so brave, so righteous, so powerful, so raging; this blond-haired force of nature; was afraid. And she was really a very tiny girl after all. "We'll be there," she answered softly.

Buffy straightened, nodded her understanding, and turned back to where the other Warriors stood. Willow had just finished her preparations. "Alright," Buffy barked, the fear gone from her voice and the general back. "Let's move."

--

The five Warriors who rushed into the seven-story pyre that had been the Benton Arms apartment building were very brave people. But courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing what must be done in spite of one's fear. All of them were used to fighting enemies: other beings that might strike and hurt them, but could be struck and feel pain in their turn. Fire felt no pain. It felt no fear. Fire raged and hungered and devoured more thoroughly than any monster. They could fight demons and monsters and even fallen angels, but they couldn't fight fire. Not with the weapons they had; not at all. They could only hope to survive. They knew this as they leaped across the gap from the safety of the roof of the nearest apartment building, and they were afraid.

There are times when fear grows so great that the mind throws its circuit-breakers, shutting off all but the most necessary functions in the hopes of avoiding total shutdown and collapse. So it was that, although the five Warriors descended into the blazing hell that had once been people's homes with a kind of emotionless clarity, later on they would remember little.

They remembered a moment or two of silent horror, like the moment when Angel kicked in an apartment's door and was already a few steps in before he realized what his ability to enter meant, and he emerged with blood-tears streaming down his face.

They remembered a few moments of screaming panic, like the moment that the fifth-floor hallway collapsed beneath Faith's feet. She caught herself, and her feet hung for an eternal moment in the crematorium that was the fourth floor before Buffy pulled her to safety.

For its sheer unexpectedness, Riley remembered the moment when he emerged onto the roof with a child under each arm and found Spike standing on the roof of the building they'd jumped from, holding out his arms and shouting "Throw the little beggars to me! Hurry, Cornbread!"

The moment when a burning piece of debris struck Angel and knocked him down, setting his coat on fire, and Riley and Buffy had to pull the debris off and smother his back.

The moment when Gunn had to chop his way through a wall to where Faith had found a little girl hiding in a closet, but was trapped when the apartment behind her filled with fire.

Outside, Willow and Tara stood at the forefront of the Scooby Gang, hand in hand, catching and hoisting as many to safety with their magic as they could.

The moment they would always remember would be the moment that they saw a young family pressed against a red-litten window. They lifted the wife to safety, then lowered the baby gently from his father's arms to his mother's, but then they heard a crash and the mother started to scream, and when they looked back at that window, there were only flames billowing out where a young man had been just a moment before.

The other members of the Scooby Gang stood behind them, watching and praying.

Except for Oz. Oz was across the street, curled into a ball, holding his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to keep out the screams. But he couldn't close his nose, and what he would always remember would be the smell of burning flesh.

The fire department arrived fifteen minutes after the initial explosion. By then, it was already over. Everyone who was going to get out alive already had. The five soot-stained Warriors were across the street. Angel had cast his ruined coat into the fire as he fled the building, and now he paced back and forth, staring at the ground and punching his fist into his open hand. Over and over again. Gunn and Faith sat leaning up against the wall of a building, leaning against each other. Riley had taken a solid swallow of smoke, and Buffy was helping him walk around and catch his breath. Though none of them noticed it, all five of them were weeping.

Tara was, too. As soon as it had become patently obvious that there was no one else to rescue from the furnace that the Benton Arms had become, she had turned and begun sobbing like a child into Willow's shoulder.

Willow was crying, too, and she had little comfort to offer. Then she felt an arm wrap around her. She looked, and it was Oz. He pulled them into himself and she reached out to both and Tara was held in between them like a crying child being comforted by her parents, and for the second time in as many days there were no old and new lovers. There was just love, and fear, and pain, and comfort.

_You're the brother she should have had, Oz_ was Willow's thought as all three of them clutched each other tight.

It was Giles who finally suggested that they return to the Hyperion to recover, regroup, and plan their next move. Not even the Mayor's Ascension had cost this many lives. It was the greatest defeat they had ever suffered.

Wolfram & Hart

Angelus strode into Lindsey's office, covered in soot and sewer-muck, but grinning. "Message received," he gloated. "Did you make those phone calls like I told you to?"

"Yes, sir," Lindsey answered. "They're on their way.

"Perfect."


	2. Day 2

_3 AM_

"Wakey-wakey!"

A bucket of ice water splashed down on Kate, jolting her back to consciousness. She gasped and spluttered and tried to wipe it off her face, but found that her hands were tied down. As she shook her head and blinked the water out of her eyes, the world came into focus for her: she was naked, spread-eagled and tied to a bed. Standing at the foot of that bed was Angel, grinning and holding an empty bucket.

"How're you feeling?" He asked.

"Angel?" She asked groggily.

He scowled. "I told you to call me Angelus," he said. "And I asked you a question."

How did she feel? She was cold, naked, she couldn't move, and there was a raw, gnawing ache in her knee and her shoulder. On the other hand…

"My shoulder and my knee—they don't feel as bad as they should. What did you do?"

He nodded in satisfaction. "I didn't want you dying of shock before I had a chance to really go to work on you, so I had an Asclepian demon come in and take a look at them." He caught her look of confusion. "They're a race of healers," He explained. "Now, generally, they're 'Not-evil Evil Things', so most of them won't have anything to do with me. But there's always a few who are just in it for the money."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and set the bucket on the floor. She gritted her teeth against the pain and tried to move away, but he ignored it and began to stroke her hair. "I can tell what you're thinking," he said in a bemused, thoughtful tone. "I'm naked, I'm tied to a bed, he looks and acts like an ordinary human in a lot of ways—when is he going to rape me?" He smiled down at her playfully. "Hm? Am I right? Is that what you're thinking?" He threaded his fingers into her hair again, but this time, instead of stroking, he closed his fist. Her scalp caught fire with pain. He didn't even have to tug. "Yes or no?"

"Yes!" she blurted.

He released her hair. "Good," he said, his voice suddenly hard. "Very good. You're learning." Then he sat back, his grin sliding back into place. "I may get around to that," he said. "I _am_ still human enough to appreciate a body like yours. But that'll come later. I have other things I want to try first. Things that'll be so much more fun. Things that'll hurt _so_ much worse."

--

_12:30 AM_

Angel hit the doors of the Hyperion and threw them open hard enough to dent the walls they slammed into. "Weapons are over there," he barked, pointing at the case in the lobby. "Arm up. I'll get my car keys."

"Angel, wait," Wesley called, forced to jog to keep up with the larger man's strides. "Don't you think we should at least take a moment to assess injuries?"

"I have second-degree burns on my back," Angel snapped, not slowing. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "Riley has some smoke inhalation, and Faith has some first-degrees on her legs. As far as I know, Buffy and Gunn got off scot-free. Does that about cover it?"

"Yes, but—Angel, wait a moment!" Wesley called in frustration as his employer pulled ahead of him.

Angel whirled on him. "He has Kate!" He snapped. He tapped on his temple. "I _saw_ him. He shot her in the shoulder so she couldn't fight and the knee so she couldn't run, and he took her. She has _no_ time."

"Then we have no time to waste on berserk rage," Giles said sternly from the doorway. The younger ex-Watcher and the vampire both turned. Angel glared, his face twitching and showing the first signs of transformation, but Giles ignored it and strode across the lobby to them. "Running off into the night blind-crazy does no one any good. Do you know where Angelus is?" Angel opened his mouth, then shut it again. His face stabilized. "No? Were you just planning to drive around town until you caught his physical or psychic scent?" Angel dropped his eyes and shoulders. Giles reached out and put a hand on one of those shoulders. "I think I have a better plan." Then he looked at Wesley. "But I'll need to see your books."

"Of course," Wesley said, starting toward the check-in counter. "This way."

Still standing in the doorway, Cordelia shook her head. "Why can't _we_ ever get him to settle down like that?"

Buffy shrugged. "Giles is good at 'Dad' stuff like that."

"Might have—" Riley's voice was rough and wheezing. He cleared his throat several times and tried again. "Might have something to do with having the nerve to tell off an angry supernatural being."

"Sounds right," Oz agreed. "He's needed it before."

Across the room, Angel settled into one of the couches with a sigh, only to leap back to his feet with a hiss of pain. He tried to pull his already-damaged shirt off, and it came away in shreds. Underneath, he was a disturbing sight: his soot-black face and hands contrasted with his dead-white skin, and his back was red and peeling. In some places it had even cracked open and started to bleed.

"Cordy?" He said, his voice tight.

"Yes?"

"Could you find the First Aid kit and get some burn ointment?"

"Sure."

Slowly, carefully, with a long, drawn-out hiss of pain, Angel sat back down. The others with nothing else to do but wait gathered around on lobby furniture.

"So who's Kate?" Buffy asked after settling down on a hassock. "I don't think you've mentioned her before."

"You've met her," Angel said. "Remember the cop who was threatening to throw me in an east-facing cell?"

"I remember that bitch," Faith growled. She settled onto a couch and winced as her jeans chafed her legs. "Tell me why we're saving her again?"

"Well," Angel said. "For one, no one deserves what Angelus is planning to do to her. She's been antagonizing me for the last year, not knowing that I have a soul, all the while thinking that it's Angelus she's standing up to. He's decided to show her what the real Angelus can do."

That was when Cordelia arrived, carrying a large Mason jar. "Lean forward," she ordered.

He obeyed, resting his elbows on his knees and continuing his story as she dipped a white cream out of the jar and rubbed it onto his back. "Second," he said. "She used to be a friend, until one of my Childer came to town and I had to tell her that I'm a vampire."

Everyone turned to look at Spike. He shook his head and held up his hands in the classic 'I didn't touch it' pose. "Hey, now, it wasn't me. I haven't been to this town since the whole 'Gem of Amara' business."

"Was it Drusilla?" Willow asked.

"Actually, his name was Penn," Angel replied. Then he noticed how much better his back felt. "Cordy? Is that the good stuff you're using?"

"We need you up and running _quickly_," she said. "I think the good stuff is called for."

"Good stuff?" Oz asked.

"We helped a healer clear her neighborhood of an imp infestation," Cordelia answered. "She paid us in supplies."

"Useful," Oz approved.

The rest of the group couldn't help but agree. Angel's back smoothed and returned to its original color almost as quickly as Cordelia's hand moved over it. Riley's breathing became easier as he merely inhaled the unguent's fresh odor.

There are those, however, who are not easily distracted. "For crying out loud, Angel," Buffy said. "How many Childer do you _have_?"

"Well, I was an Irish Catholic farmboy," he answered sheepishly. "That means big families."

All eyes turned to Riley.

"Hey, I'm Presbyterian," he said.

Willow fixed him with a suspicious look. "How many?" She demanded. "Don't make me point lights at you."

Riley sighed in defeat. "Four brothers and four sisters. I'm the oldest."

"Holy _shit_!" Faith exclaimed.

Joyce just winced and crossed her legs.

"Getting back to the _point_," Angel interrupted testily, "Even after she found out that I was a vampire, we were able to work together well enough until vampires killed her father. So I think she deserves to be cut a little slack."

Cordelia had finished with Angel and moved on to Faith. "Roll up your pant legs," she directed.

"Um…burns go up a little higher than that," Faith said. "Unless you want me to drop trou, you better just give me the stuff so I can step into the other room."

Without a word, Cordelia handed her the jar.

Giles arrived just as Faith was leaving, grinning triumphantly, holding a large open tome in his hand. Wesley trailed behind him. "I've found it!" He crowed, thrusting the book into Angel's hands. "Look there," he said, pointing.

Angel looked where he was bid, read, then looked up quizzically. "Giles, this is a wedding spell."

Giles nodded irritably. "Yes, yes, that's its most common usage, but you're missing the point. What it _does_ is create a psychic bond—"

"Or strengthen existing ones," Angel guessed. "And that's how I'll track him."

"Yes," Giles said, as if the man before him was a student who had just answered a difficult problem, rather than a being old enough to be his distant ancestor. "That's right."

Angel hesitated. He didn't _want_ to strengthen his connection with Angelus. He wanted to get rid of what he had. Every time he touched minds with the demon, he was flooded with cruelty, blood-hunger, and a gleeful love of destruction. It was like be submerged in ice-cold sewage. Every time it happened, he wondered how he had carried that inside him for so long without going mad.

But Angelus had Kate. And Kate had antagonized Angel—and through him, Angelus—for a year.

Angel remembered what Angelus did to those who annoyed him. He got creative.

Kate didn't deserve that.

"What do I have to do?"

--

The preparations for the ceremony took an hour. Giles had to modify the spell so that 1) Angelus didn't have to be present and 2) Love was not the source of the purported bond. The first was easy—apparently there was a variant on the spell that had once been used so that lovers could bond even when separated by war or other disaster. The latter was easier than it otherwise might have been. After all, Angel and Angelus had once been the same being.

That gave the Warriors time to change their clothes and clean up, and it gave everyone time to arm themselves.

--

"Do you have any guns?" Riley called as he perused the weapons cabinet.

"Why?" Angel asked. "They won't help."

"They won't kill him," Riley corrected. "But he'll probably be easy to stake with a bullet in his head."

"Good point."

"Besides," Riley added, "You said that Angelus would probably be raising an army. Maybe there'll be things in it bullets _can_ kill."

"It's actually kind of a moot point," Angel said. "The answer to your original question is no, we don't—"

"Actually," Wesley said, pointing. "They're right over there, in a case behind the bookshelves. You'd best hurry, I believe Mr. Giles and Mr. Harris are over there right now, making their selections."

"Do they have any hunting rifles?" Tara's voice came from across the room. There was a pause, and Angel suspected that whoever was involved in the conversation with her was staring in surprise. "My father taught me how to shoot with one."

"Doesn't look like it," Xander's voice answered. "Looks like they went for streetfighter stuff—easy to conceal. They have a shotgun, though—"

"Don't take that!" Riley called, alarmed, as he hurried away across the lobby. "We'll be in too close quarters!"

Wesley caught Angel's look of surprise. "We don't all have super strength, Angel," he said as he turned back to the spell preparations.

--

"Hey! Peaches!"

Angel gritted his teeth. "What is it, 'Willy'?" he growled.

Spike growled back. He hated 'Willy' even more than 'William'. Angel was perhaps the only vampire on Earth who could call him that and live. Except maybe Drusilla, and she would have had days of torture for it. "What about Mum?" He growled, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder toward where Joyce sat on one of the sofas. Startled at being acknowledged, she sat up straight and looked in their direction.

"What about her?" Angel asked.

"How 'bout tossing her a weapon? Believe me when I say she's good with an axe."

"Is that true?" Angel asked her. "Because if it is, we need every hand."

"Uh, yes. I…guess so."

"Good." Angel plucked an axe from the case and handed it to her. It was the smallest and lightest battle-axe he had, but it was still a full-sized battle-axe, unlike the weapon that both Gunn and Faith were now referring to as Cordelia's "Ladysmith Hand Axe."

"Thank you," Joyce said as she took the weapon from his hand. She stood and took a few practice swings, looking surprisingly competent and dangerous. "Yes, I think this will do just fine."

"What do you know?" Angel said as he walked away. "She's a natural."

"I could've told you that, mate."

--

The lobby's furniture had been pushed to the walls, and a huge pentacle had been drawn in chalk on the floor, with candles at each point and intersection of the star. If this had, indeed, been a wedding, the candles would have been red or white.

As it was, they were black.

Angel stood in the exact center of the design, stripped to the waist and barefoot. Wrapped around his left arm was a cord to bind him to the object of the spell. If it had been a wedding, especially if his bride had been present for a handfasting, that "cord" would have been a ribbon.

For his hate-bond, he'd chosen barbed wire.

He was uncomfortable. Not just at the thought of what he was about to do, but because he was standing on a thirty-foot-in-diameter holy symbol. Belial hadn't been lying: the voice of the Angelus-personality might be gone now, but he was still a demon. An unholy thing. He still hungered for blood, he still feared the cleansing fire and sunlight, and holy things like the one he stood on still rejected him.

Let it be, then. Sometimes he suspected that his purpose as a Champion of Good was to draw the darkness into himself, so that Champions like Buffy, who pierced the darkness with their light, could make easier headway.

That was what he comforted himself with, anyway. It made what he had to do easier to face.

The Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations, each holding a black candle, filed down the stairs into the lobby. Giles, as the presiding official, led the procession. Spike followed immediately behind. Nobody liked it, but as the "son" of _both_ parties involved in the spell, he had a mandatory place of honor. Immediately following Spike was Buffy, who had agreed to stand with Angel as his "Best Man," and she carried a tray with several jars of paint instead of a candle. The three of them led the procession once around the circle, then joined Angel in the center as the rest of the group arranged themselves along the outer edge. They made sure that a Supernatural or magic-user stood at each point of the star: Cordelia, as a seer and a channel to the Powers That Be, stood at the "Spirit" point. Faith stood at Fire, while Tara took Earth and Willow Water. It had been decided that it would be unwise to channel any mystical energy through Oz's unstable Wolf-spirit, so Wesley—a competent, if unspectacular, alchemist—stood at Air.

Spike, looking distinctly uncomfortable himself, took up his position at Angel's left hand, while Buffy stood at his right.

Giles stepped before them and began the ceremony, asking the traditional question for the "separate" variant: "The other member of the bond does not stand before us. Do you have his consent?"

"We are of one mind on it," Angel replied. A ritual dodge. If this were a wedding ceremony, and the bond was to be one of love and trust, it would fail.

"Do you bear witness to this?" Giles said to Spike and Buffy.

"We bear witness," they replied, only slightly out of sync.

"Then let the ritual commence," Giles pronounced.

Angel held up his hands, palms out. "From this day forth, let us always be touching," He said.

"You shall always be touching," Giles confirmed.

Buffy dipped her fingers in one of the paints and drew a gray band around each wrist.

"Our hearts will beat with one beat, our blood shall be as one blood."

His heart didn't beat, and his blood was stolen. Still, the same was true of Angelus.

"Your hearts will beat with one beat, your blood shall be as one blood."

Buffy traced a red heart on his chest.

"I shall see with his eyes."

"You shall see with his eyes."

Blue was dabbed onto his eyelids.

"I shall hear with his ears."

"You shall hear with his ears."

The same blue was dabbed onto the tips of his ears.

"I shall know his mind."

If this had been a love bond, the phrase would have been "Heart and Mind." The thought made Angel want to retch. He was finally free, he could finally safely be with Buffy. Nothing in the world would give him greater joy than to speak those words to her, and to hear her speak them back. Instead, he was performing a twisted mockery of a wedding ceremony to bind himself more tightly to an obscenity.

His fist clenched tight around the barbed wire coiled around his hand. Blood started to trickle between his fingers.

"You shall know his mind."

Buffy reached up drew a black sigil on his forehead.

For a moment, they stood silent and expectant. Had it worked? Would anything happen?

Then something slammed into Angel. He screamed, and the world went black.

--

Across town, Angelus watched the Asclepian demon—a fifteen-foot snake with arm-like tentacles—at work.

"Don't fix her _too_ much," Angelus was saying. "I don't want her to be able to get away. I just don't want her to die."

The Asclepian didn't like that. It didn't like back-seat healers under the best of circumstances, which these weren't. It took questionable clients, clients that most of its brethren wouldn't deal with: wounded Mafiosi and gang members, vampires—once it had even helped a member of the Scourge. But this itched its scales. Healing anyone who had something to trade was one thing. Healing someone just so they could be tortured was something else.

Angelus's face suddenly lit up. "Say, do you think you could put a few things back together wrong? Cripple her so—"

The Asclepian turned around and glared at him. It said nothing—speaking languages designed for unsplit tongues was difficult for it, though it understood perfectly—but its meaning was clear: "I may not be choosy about my clients, but I _do_ have _some_ principles."

"All right, all right, it was just a—" Suddenly something hit Angelus behind the eyes. Hot pain blossomed, then was gone. But he could feel something there that hadn't been there before.

"Oh, Soulboy," Angelus said, shaking his head. "What are you doing? Something stupid I suspect. You're almost as predictable as Buff."

--

"Angel? Angel, wake up!"

"Stop shaking him. He'll wake up when he's ready."

"Was that supposed to happen?"

"Is he okay—I mean, is he gonna be?"

Angel moaned and stirred.

"Looks like."

Several different unpleasant sensations ran through Angel at the same time. The first was what Doyle would have called a great cracking migraine. The second was the disorientation involved in finding oneself on the floor and not remembering how one got there. Both of these were at least somewhat familiar from his life as Liam. But the third—his desire to run into his apartment, burn his clothes, and take a several-hour shower in scalding holy water while scrubbing himself with industrial cleaners, was rather new.

He opened his eyes and the light speared into them, setting his head to renewed pounding. He raised his hand to shade his eyes, and the world slowly came into focus: Buffy, Wesley, and Cordelia were all kneeling around him. Giles, Willow, and Faith stood looking over the first rank's shoulders.

"Are you okay?" Willow asked anxiously. He recognized her voice as the one who had asked before.

"I…ugh." He rubbed his forehead with the heels of his hands, and his headache started to fade. A little. "I will be." He started to sit up. Buffy slipped an arm around his shoulders and helped him up so he could hang his head between his knees for a moment.

"Did it work?" Giles asked quietly. "What did you see?"

Angel looked up at him. "I, uh—I…"

What _had _he seen?

He couldn't remember. There'd been fire, and blood, and some reaching, grasping darkness.

No, he couldn't remember what he'd _seen_, but he could remember what he'd _felt_. Oh, yes, he could remember what he'd _touched_. All those years, even when Angelus had been dominant, he had been diluted by his residence in the shell that had once been a man named Liam. Yes, _diluted_ was the word, diluted as even such ancient and mighty vampires as the Master and Kakistos were diluted by that essential humanity of body and mind. Bastardized. Hybrids.

Tainted.

Just enough to make the Judge's touch itch.

But now Angelus was free. Pure. And when Angel had touched him, he'd touched something old and evil and as hungry as darkness itself.. Something glacially cold one moment and wild, ravenous, forest-fire hot the next. Something that wanted to gouge the land, rip up the trees and demolish the mountains. Something that wanted to turn everything before it to ash.

"I…don't remember what I saw. But yes, it did work."

"So you know where he is?"

"No," Angel answered as he climbed to his feet. "But I have his scent."

--

It took just a moment for Angel to pull on his shirt, shoes, and spare trench coat, then they were off.

The same convoy that had come from Sunnydale the previous afternoon threaded through the garish lights and hungry darkness of the 2 AM streets of Los Angeles. Before long, they had left the garish light behind and submerged themselves in the darkness. They entered the narrow, labyrinthine, tenebrous streets where the night-people lived and the night-things hunted them.

With their roaring speed and utter disregard of all traffic laws and signals, they should have been stopped. And if they had been stopped, they would almost certainly have had to resort to magic to avoid being taken in. They were a rolling arsenal.

But they were not stopped, and it was nearing 3 AM when they entered an industrial wasteland. Every city, no matter how small, has at least one such place. People don't live there or even go there anymore. The warehouses of a dead business or even a dead industry stand deserted in the middle of an empty parking lot. Usually, the chain-link fences still stand, but sometimes the gates just stand open. As they did here.

Usually, such places stand dark and silent. But this one had a light burning.

"We're here," Angel announced.

**Inside**

_3:05 AM_

Angelus had set up a tray beside Kate's bed. He'd set it up very carefully so she could see what was on it: pliers. A scalpel. An extension cord and a wirestripper. A speculum. A candle. A cigarette lighter. Some paperclips.

"I thought we'd start simple," he was saying. "I don't have the equipment to get really exotic here, and I don't want to maim you yet. I mean, how am I going to put bamboo under your fingernails _later_ if I cut off your fingers _now_? You see how it is." He picked up the wirestripper and took an end of the extension cord. "Torture is just as much a science as it is an art. You mess something up, the whole thing is ruined." He clipped the socket end off the extension cord and began to strip the insulation from the wire. "Wishing you hadn't been quite so bitchy when you were dealing with Soulboy?" He asked.

Kate was terrified. No one knew she was here—as far as anyone knew, she'd been killed in the fire. So she could expect no rescue. She had to get out of this herself, and she suspected that as soon as he set to work, she wouldn't be in any condition to. She had to keep him talking. "You keep saying that name. Who is Soulboy?" She asked.

"Ah, yes. That's right. I did promise to tell you just how stupid you are. Well, it's pretty simple, although I doubt you'll believe me."

"I'll believe anything you tell me."

He chuckled, laid the wirestripper and the extension cord in his lap like an old lady's knitting, reached out and mussed her hair like a fond uncle. "_Very_ good. You learn quickly."

He explained vampire nature to her: how a person turned into a vampire is dead, that their soul is displaced and a demon fills in the gap it leaves behind. How he had ravaged Europe for nearly 150 years, but was finally cursed with a soul by some angry gypsies. Except for several months in '98, the Soul—and the Angel she knew—had been dominant. But two days ago now, a devil had pulled him free from his long imprisonment.

_Insane. Oh, god, he's gone insane. MPD or something. His original personality has reasserted itself. And he's delusional._

"Well," Angelus said as he finished his story. "Enough of that. Down to business." Suddenly, his head snapped up, as if he'd heard something. "Oops. Company."

He set down the extension cord, picked up the scalpel, and used it to slash the lengths of clothesline that tied her to the bed. "You'd better come with me."

**Facing Off**

_3:10 AM_

Heaved by the muscles of the Warriors and the minds of the two witches, the warehouse's great garage door slid up into the ceiling with a metallic shriek.

The Warriors flung themselves in through the door and spread out, weapons at the ready. Riley gripped a Combat Magnum with both hands. Angel and Gunn both carried axes, though Angel also had a broadsword strapped to his back. Buffy held a sword as well, and her hand hovered over the stake in her pocket. Faith held the Mayor's knife and a stake of her own. Spike had scorned Angel's weapons chest and simply picked up a length of lead pipe.

The warehouse was dim, but not dark. Roughly half of the lights were on, but they were in irregular patches throughout the building, leaving islands of light and pools of deep shadow.

Riley, instinctively looking for snipers, noticed catwalks up near the ceiling, but he couldn't see if anyone or anything was on them. He didn't like that.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. I get a gun, then everyone wants one."

All of them whipped toward the patch of shadow where the voice originated.

"Come out where we can see you," Angel called. "You know hiding isn't an option."

"Oh, I'm not hiding. In fact, there's something I want you to see."

Some of those present—Joyce, Tara, Anya—even Gunn, Wesley, and Faith—weren't fully prepared for Angelus's sheer viciousness, and couldn't suppress a gasp of shock.

Angelus held Kate upright by her hair. His gun was to her temple, and he held her in front of himself as a human shield. She was still naked, and her shoulder and knee both showed raw, puckered, half-healed wounds.

She struggled and pulled at his wrist even as she limped and stumbled along, but he jammed the barrel hard against her temple, and she froze. Angelus fixed Riley with a malicious grin.

"Pop quiz, hot shot," he taunted. "Terrorist has a police officer prisoner, with a gun to her head. Can't shoot the prisoner because she's been shot twice already, and one more could kill her. What do you do, punk? What do you do?"

"I wait for the terrorist to move his head. Even a little bit. Then I put a bullet in his eye," Riley said coldly.

"Hey, genius," Angelus catcalled. "Bullets? On a vampire? No wonder the rest of your little G.I.Joe playgroup got eaten if you're the best they had."

Riley barely heard the taunt. He was ice. He'd been one of the best marksmen in the Initiative—it was one of the few areas where he excelled even Buffy. All he needed was one opening. One.

Two could play this psychological warfare game. Time to put four years of college and a half-year of graduate study to use. "I don't have to shoot you in the head with this thing too many times before it counts as decapitation," he replied, still calm. "Besides, how do you plan to dodge incoming stakes with most of your brains painting the wall behind you?" Good. Make him feel vulnerable. Make him nervous.

"You're not going to pull the trigger."

Heads—not Riley's—turned. Who had spoken?

Anya?

"And why not, you cowardly, obnoxious little slut?" Angelus sneered.

"Because she's the only hostage you have," The ex-demon explained patiently. "Once you shoot her—"

"Then you're ours," Angel growled.

Angelus pursed his lips and nodded. "Good point—except for one thing: who ever said she was a hostage? Not me. I just thought I'd bring her out here and blow her brains out in front of you for grins."

He grinned a mouthful of daggers at them, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

Willow and Tara's hands slapped together.

_Riley NOW!_ Shouted in Riley's head.

Angelus's gun hand snapped up and away.

Riley twitched his own aim just a hair away from where it had been and fired.

The explosion was deafening in the empty, echoing concrete space.

Someone started to scream.

Kate stumbled forward, her hair saturated with blood.

_Oh God I missed Oh god I killed her I killed a woman I killed a cop I—_

Then they all realized that the screamer was male.

--

Kate stumbled forward. Her body was a symphony of pain—pins and needles still stabbed into her awakening extremities, she couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears, and she suspected that Angel (_Angelus?_) had torn out a chunk of her scalp.

But she forced herself to run. This was her one and only chance to escape, to survive, and she forced all of her remaining strength into her leg muscles, forced them to drive forward toward the safety of Angel—

_Angel? Then who is--? He was telling the truth?!_

--and his friends.

She'd run no more than three steps when agony like white-hot steel pins shot through her knee, splinters of pain spearing into the soft meat between her bones as the delicate, half-finished (if she'd looked into the corner of her room, she would have seen the broken-necked body of an Asclepian demon who had insisted on finishing the job) healing ruptured.

With a scream of pain, she pitched forward. The cement floor rose up to meet her—then it stopped, and she was hanging in place, and then she was flying across the room.

--

Willow and Tara grimaced with the effort of bringing the wounded police officer across. It would take them a moment or two to recover from moving Angelus's hand.

It had been frighteningly difficult.

Together, the two of them could have lifted Gunn's fully-loaded truck. Arm-wrestling with someone should have been _nothing_.

If they hadn't caught him by surprise, they probably wouldn't have been able to move him.

As they set Kate down behind the Scooby Gang's skirmish line, Willow mentally calculated the foot-pounds of force she and Tara could apply, and compared it to Angelus's resistance, and she came to a simple conclusion: Angelus was impossibly strong, even for a supernatural being.

This was bad.

--

Angel pulled the trench coat off a protesting Spike's back and wrapped Kate in it. Then he leaned her up against the wall.

"How is it possible?" She asked in a dreamy slur. "Who is he? Who are you?"

"I'll explain later," he said. Then he pulled a .45 that he'd brought along for this very purpose out of an inner pocket of his own trench coat. "Here, can you use this?"

Her eyes cleared, and she took the gun's handle in a firm grip. "Yes. I can."

"Better save one for yourself," Spike taunted. "Just in case we lose."

Without a word, Angel stood up and smacked his Childe across the back of the head.

Then Angelus's screams turned to screams of laughter.

"Better come see this," Oz called.

--

Angelus's right hand had been all but removed at the wrist. It was nothing but a mess of meat and bone. For a moment, he'd stood, gripping his wrist and staring in shock, screaming in pain.

But then that moment had passed, and flesh like melted wax began to flow upward into the place of the ruined hand, and the screams turned to laughter. Another moment later, the hand was replaced, only not as it had been before. Now it was larger, gnarled, ice-white and tipped with black claws.

Then he turned the palm toward them, and the laughter doubled. Madness in stereo.

There was a fanged mouth in the palm of the new hand.

"Oh, _shit_." Had that been Faith? No, it sounded more like…Joyce?

Then he released his wrist and turned the other palm toward them, and the fanged mouth in that hand joined in the laughter.

"Holy _fuck_!" _That_ had been Faith.

Tara whispered a prayer to the protector-goddess Durga.

Angelus raised his hands. "Kill them all!" He shouted with all three mouths.

The shadows came alive. Demons began to pour out into the lighted areas. Some were insectile, others reptilian, some were humanoid, and some were tentacled horrors. But they all had one thing in common: they all wore identical gray uniforms.

"The Scourge!" Giles exclaimed, shocked.

"They bad news?" Xander asked. "The Nazi uniforms kinda hint toward yeah, but I want to make sure."

"They're a demon organization dedicated to the utter annihilation of humanity—especially in the form of racial impurity among demons."

"So they _are_ Nazis?"

"Effectively, yes."

"But how can Angelus give them orders?" Anya asked. "He's a vampire. He's not pure."

"But he is. He's a vampire _demon_ now, not a vampire. Thanks to Belial, he's probably purer than any of them."

_Thuck._

_Whump!_

A dragon-winged demon had been gliding down from the catwalks that Riley had disliked so much—and which were now teeming with members of the Scourge. Cordelia had shot it down with a crossbow bolt.

All eyes turned to her. "Murderers," she whispered. She dropped the crossbow she held and pulled out another, as well as the Katana she had chosen over her axe. "Murderers," she said more strongly as she leveled her crossbow at the first rank of the Scourge, who were staring in shock at the body of their comrade that one of these easy-meat humans had managed to kill. Her face twisted into a rictus of hate and she screamed "Kill them all!"

Both sides took it as their signal and erupted.

--

A broadside volley of gunfire broke the first rank of the Scourge's attack, and a battering ram of telekinetic force from Willow and Tara flung the second into disarray. Then the two sides crashed together, and everything erupted into a chaotic melee.

--

Riley had used up his combat magnum in the initial charge. He threw it away—taking the extra moment he needed to catch a demon like a giant praying mantis in the eye with it—pulled out a pair of 9 mm berettas, and waded back into the chaos.

--

Faith was desperately wishing that she had a weapon with more reach than her knife. She was fighting some kind of thing that was mostly humanoid, except it had teeth like ice picks and long bone swords growing out of its arms. She looked for an opening, but it was good—it kept one "sword" back on guard while slashing at her with the other. And she was having trouble blocking with just her knife. It was backing her up—she went with it, hoping to get to an open space so she could run and get a chain or a length of pipe or something.

Then a tail swept her feet out from under her and dropped her on her back.

Swords loomed over her, drawing its arm back for a killing blow. She brought her knife up, hoping to deflect the blade so it "just" pinned her shoulder to the floor.

_Blam!_

Swords collapsed like a marionette with cut strings, leaving nothing but a mist of violet blood in the air.

Giles, a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, a chain wrapped around his shoulder, leaped into the space that Swords had just vacated and stood over her while she climbed to her feet.

"Are you all right?" He shouted.

"Five by five," she answered.

"Good. Take the chain!"

"Where'd you get this?" she asked as she obeyed.

"No proper hooligan goes to a brawl without at least one chain at hand."

--

Oz, though he didn't think of himself as a hooligan, would have agreed. He stood close by Willow and Tara, providing—in his words –"Ground Cover" so they could safely throw their magic into the fray. Rather than raiding Angel Investigations' gun cabinet, he had well and truly stocked up at the closet of hand weapons. He had a pair of nunchaku tucked into his belt, a knife in each boot, and he was currently whirling a manriki-gusari: a chain with a blunt weight at each end. He was demonstrating some of the _other_ things he'd learned in Tibet. He'd already broken the attacking spider-demon's mandible with one end, and he'd wrapped the other around its front legs.

He pulled, heard chitin snap, and he couldn't repress a sharp-toothed grin of savage satisfaction.

--

"Fore!"

Spike swung his length of pipe, and a serpent-demon that had been coming in low went sailing.

"Bloody hell. Hooked it."

--

Angel burst out of the crowd of demons and into the clear. He'd left a trail of broken bodies and severed limbs as wide as himself through the Scourge ranks.

He was right there with Cordelia on the "Kill them all" idea. Yep. Kill 'em all. Sounds like a good idea.

But first things first.

"Angelus," he growled, going into demon face and hefting his axe.

Angelus, who'd been scowling as he watched Buffy run her sword into the belly of a demon twice her size, turned toward him and grinned.

He was also in demon face. But his face was bone-white, his ears had gone long and pointed, and he had horns where Angel's brow was merely ridged. His jaw was distorted and oversized, full of teeth as long as human fingers.

"Soulboy," he rumbled in all three voices.

--

Buffy pulled her sword out of the demon's belly and dodged another swipe from its massive, apelike arms.

"No, you don't understand," she said. "This is the part where you fall down and die."

"Murrrgh!" Was its only answer, and it swung again.

"No, no. No ad-libbing." She panted, dancing out of range again.

It drew back its fist for a heavy overhand blow, then stopped, stiffened, and collapsed.

Wesley stood behind it, his chest heaving, a war-pick in his hands, buried in the thing's back. "Weak…spot…" He gasped. "Under…shoulder…blade."

"Thanks, W—Oh, my God, is he _insane_?"

Wesley followed her gaze, to where Angel was attacking Angelus. "It seems so," he said, pulling the pick out of the demon's back.

"You ready?" She asked.

He nodded. "Let's go."

--

Angel swung his axe at Angelus's head, but the demon dodged the blade, moved the weapon past him with the palm of his hand, and kept spinning until he came full circle and opened a quadruple-line of gashes in Angel's face with a backhand slash of his claw.

--

Across the room, Xander stood in a defensive position by the wounded Kate with Joyce, Anya, Willow, Tara, and Oz.

"Look!" Anya shouted, pointing.

All of them looked.

"Merciful Goddess," Willow whispered. "He doesn't have a chance."

Xander heard. He threw the safeties on the gun he was holding, shoved it in his back pocket, and drew a crossbow.

--

Angel didn't even seem to notice that he was wounded. He just came back with a low slash, intended to take Angelus out at the knees.

Angelus leaped over the slash and kicked out, sending Angel hurtling across the room to slam into the wall. He slid down it and lay in a boneless heap at its base.

--

"He's killing him!" Joyce cried.

_Please, _Xander thought as he drew a bead. _Whoever would listen to a guy like me. If I don't do anything else right in my life, let me do this._

--

Still grinning, Angelus took a step toward his victim.

_Thuck._

Everyone, Scourge and Scooby, froze.

Angelus looked down to where the crossbow bolt quivered in his chest.

Perfect shot. No vampire had ever been struck more clear and true in the heart.

For the creatures in the room who had heartbeats, one passed. Then two.

Then Angelus started to laugh.

In his demon form, his laugh was a guttural, clotted thing. But he laughed loud and he laughed long, and he raised his arms to his audience.

"Behold!" He declaimed. Surely he was talking to the Scourge, trying to make an impression, because he would never use such pompous language with people who knew him. He pulled the stake out of his chest and raised it over his head. "I have risen above the weaknesses of the mongrel kind!"

With that, the mouth in that hand bit the bolt in two.

--

"Oh shit this is _bad_." Faith.

--

"We are in _so_ much trouble." Cordelia.

--

No one noticed Angel sprinting across the room until he plucked something from inside his trench coat and leaped. He caught Angelus in a flying headlock—Angelus rocked on his feet, but managed to stay standing, and Angel was left hanging from his neck. It was only then that they realized that Angelus's demon form was at least seven feet tall—and pressed something wrapped in cloth to Angelus's face. Something hissed, and Angelus shrieked.

"How about _this_ weakness?" Angel roared.

A cross. It had to be. Angel had wrapped a cross in cloth and smuggled it into the battle in his trench coat, suffered the discomfort of the holy symbol so near to his demon skin, all for a chance to burn Angelus. Make him hurt as he'd made others hurt. And now he had his chance.

Angelus screamed like a banshee. Only now did they recognize that his screams at losing his hand had been well-acted fakes, something to keep them off-balance until he could surprise, demoralize, and mock them with his new talents. But this was real. This was impossible to fake. This was a wild animal in agony, its hide on fire, rolling helplessly in the dirt.

"Do you like that?" Angel bellowed. "Is _this_ funny? I don't hear you laughing!"

Angelus screamed and staggered and thrashed and tore at Angel with his claws. Angel was battered and torn, but he held on like grim death.

"This is for those people in that apartment building!"

Angelus's face caught fire. His new scream of anguish made the others sound like whimpers.

"This is for Jenny Calendar!"

The cloth caught fire and burned away.

"This is for Buffy and Giles!"

His own hand sizzled and—bathed in the fire from Angelus's face and pressed against the cross—caught fire.

"For my family!" He screamed in agony and rage, pressing the cross into Angelus's face even harder, squeezing tighter, not letting up.

"Get _off_ me!" Angelus roared. A tentacle punched out of his shirt and lanced into Angel's stomach.

--

For the second time in five minutes, Angel found himself flying across the room and crashing into a wall. He slammed his head and his teeth chipped with the force of jarring shut. Ribs cracked, his spine flexed and whiplashed, and his limbs splayed wide.

His hand was put out by the wind. There was that, anyway.

But Angel didn't notice any of this. The breath-stealing impact in his stomach had turned into a white-hot bar of agony that shot clear through him.

Across the room, he saw Angelus smothering the charred ruin that half his face had become with his own trench coat.

"Let me show you the future, Soul Boy," Angelus whispered. Angel saw his lips move, but he heard it in his head. "Let me show you _my_ world."

Then everything went black.

--

Angel found himself standing on a vast, empty, twilit plain. He looked around wildly.

_Where? How?_

"Welcome to the future, Liam," A great, rumbling whisper said. Angel whipped toward the source. Angelus's face—his own face—filled the horizon. "Welcome to the end of history," it rumbled. "Enjoy the show."

Then he began to laugh uproariously, and as he opened his mouth wide to do so, a vast cloud of darkness poured out. The cloud filled the horizon, obscuring his face. Then it swept forward, raining blood and laughing in the same voice.

Angel turned and ran, ran from the advancing cloud-wall of darkness with its reaching, whipping tendrils, but it was no use. It hit him and swept him off his feet like a riptide.

Then all horizons were opened to him.

He saw this same darkness sweep over Los Angeles, and all of the people in it were Turned in an instant, but they weren't ordinary fledglings, barely conscious and stuck in their half-formed demon faces, oh, my, no. Some had wings, others cloven hooves. Yet others had horns, and some had bat-faces. Every vampire born in this darkness, this mutating radiation from Hell, was a Master or a Kakistos or a Lothos.

The world spun at exaggerated speed, and light stained the horizon. The vampires descended into the storm drains while the Darkness descended into the sea, and before long dolphins and fish and whales and strange things from the deeps began to float to the surface, pale and bloodless.

Night came again, and the vampires erupted out of Los Angeles and the Darkness rose from the sea and Angel saw a blur of days pass by as the vampires and the darkness ravened and reveled and killed their way across the world. In just a few moments' time, the whole world had been Turned. When the last human fell and rose again, all of the vampires turned to face the rising sun.

As its light swept the Earth, a great wave of fire raced behind it, fed by everything that had once been the human race. And all of the works of humankind and nature were caught in that great Burning.

And when they were all gone, the Darkness rose from the sea one last time and formed itself into a man-shape colossus, and it stood in the midst of the flames, a spreading ocean of blood still raining down from its upraised arms. It laughed its dark joy and triumph and defiance to the stars as the sun came around one last time and burned it away at last. It died laughing, leaving a dead, cold, ashen world behind.

--

"NO!" Angel screamed, writhing and clutching at the tentacle.

Twenty feet away, something snapped inside Joyce Summers. She had hidden from this fight. She had tried to keep her daughter away from it. She had tried to drive this man away, so Buffy could escape. But none of it had worked. It had all come back to this. If she couldn't pull Buffy out, she would stand at her side, and now one of the men (_one_ of the men!) that her precious, beloved daughter loved was dying in front of her eyes and

She.

Wasn't.

Going.

To let.

That.

Happen.

The world went into slow motion as she charged, swinging the axe as she went, putting her full momentum, her full weight into it.

Shoulder. "Leave"

Upswing. "My"

Zenith. "Son-in-Law"

Downswing. "Alone!"

The tentacle split in two, spraying her with cold blood. Across the room, Angelus roared in rage and pain. Angel began to crumple, but Xander was there to catch him.

"Come on, Buddy," Xander was saying. "Let's get you to the nice cop with the nice gun who can cover your ass." He couldn't carry Angel—the vampire outweighed him by a good seventy pounds. But at the last second, Angel recovered enough consciousness to stumble along on his own, steadying himself on Xander's shoulder.

--

Across the room, Angelus roared in rage. "Bitch!" He bellowed. "You bitch!" Then he caught himself, visibly stopping himself before his rant could really get started. Losing his cool would be bad. Screaming temper tantrums impressed no one, not even if you were (as he now was) nearly eight feet tall and laden with more natural weaponry than the rest of the room combined. It would just tell the pathetic, dried-up has-been of a bloodsack that she'd hurt him, even if just a little. For that same reason, it would cost him face with the Scourge.

No.

Calm. No tantrums. No berserk rages. He shrunk back down to the image of the form he'd once stolen from Liam of Galway.

Still. Time to take the gloves off.

He held up a single claw. "You have managed," he announced. "To piss me off."

He slid the claw down his chest, parting his already-damaged shirt. Then he took the flapping edges and pulled it open.

--

Buffy, still working her way toward Angelus with Wesley following in her wake and covering her back, came up short. "Oh. My God."

--

Riley used the .45 in his right hand to cross himself.

--

"Get it out," Angel muttered, clutching at the length of tentacle that still wriggled in his midsection.

" No, wait!" Xander said, grabbing the vampire's hand. He'd seen the tentacle's tip sticking out of Angel's back: it was bullet-shaped, but it had barbs. Go in easy, come out hard. If Angel pulled it out through his stomach, most of his guts would come with it. "You have to pull it out—" He grabbed the tentacle, braced himself against Angel's back, prayed that the barbs didn't have venom or any other cute tricks, and pulled.

_Schluck_

Angel screamed and all but collapsed into Xander's arms.

"—this way."

Joyce and Anya hurried to help him, but Joyce froze and pointed in wide-eyed horror.

"Oh my God," She gasped. "What! Is! That!"

"The void," Angel muttered deliriously. "The hunger of the stars, the bleeding shadow, the darkness from beneath."

--

A massive, spike-toothed maw split Angelus's torso vertically from collarbone to waist. There was no moist pink lining within, just blackness. Depthless blackness, as if Angelus wasn't a solid being anymore. As if he was just a conduit to the darkness that Belial had emerged from just two days ago, where unspeakable things still swam. The Void beneath reality.

As if Angel's delirious ravings were correct.

Indeed, perhaps that was the only explanation, because one moment there was nothing but the darkness. The next, there were _things_ in the darkness. Moving. Writhing.

Coming.

The moment after that, the things burst forth:

Tentacles. Dozens of them. Or were they tongues?

Some tentacles had stingers or barbs. Some had pincers, others had mouths. Others yet had things that looked like a mosquito's mouthparts.

The tentacles (tongues?) lashed out throughout the battleground, cracking like whips, striking like snakes, forcing the Scoobies apart.

The Scourge, heartened by the fall of one of their opponents' champions and the breaking of the line, surged forward with a roar.

--

Riley's last gun was empty. He knew that. But he shoved it into the face of something that looked like a velociraptor in a Nazi uniform anyway and pulled the trigger. It ducked its head, wincing.

_Click._

It looked up again, a confident grin on its face.

Which was when he clubbed it upside the head with the gun barrel.

Its head snapped to the side with a yelp of pain, then swung back with a snarl of rage. It had only come halfway back around when Riley shoved a knife into the spot where its jaw met its neck.

It tore the knife out of his hand as it collapsed.

That was okay. He had another in his boot. But before he resorted to depending on a single knife…

He reached over his shoulder and drew the roman gladius he had strapped to his back. He wasn't very good with a long sword yet, though Mr. Giles was training him. He was better with a knife, but he needed more reach in this situation. The short sword was as happy a medium as he could find.

He slashed out and clipped the end off a tentacle that was biting at him.

He started backing toward the nearest wall, sword in one hand, knife in the other, as the Scourge started to close in around him.

Battle is no place for amateurs. And a pro knows when to forget about pride and yell for help. "Mayday!" He shouted. "Mayday! Mayday!"

--

Buffy's head snapped toward the shout.

"Riley!" she called.

She'd been heading toward Angel, but she could see that Xander, Anya, her mother, and even Kate were doing their best to defend her lover (husband?), who was sitting up against the wall, clutching his stomach and doing his best to regather his strength.

They were being attacked by the greatest concentration of tentacles, obviously still trying to get at Angel. But Riley was alone.

"Giles! Cordelia!" She yelled. "Help my mother!"

She looked over her shoulder, to where Wesley had just chopped down something that looked like a five-foot sea anemone with wings. "You come with me," she ordered. "Faith!" She called out, raising her voice again. "This way! 'Beefstick' is in trouble!"

She changed direction and began to chop her way through the Scourge like underbrush in the jungle. "Riley! Hold on! I'm coming!"

--

Spike had lost his length of pipe. It had been sliced in two by another demon like "Swords". He'd come out all right in that one—shoved the larger piece in its ear 'til it came out the other side—but that's something of a one-time maneuver.

Now he fought on, grim and silent and bare-knuckled. There were no quips, no flashes of wit for his own benefit. Sure, he'd lost a chunk of meat out of his shoulder and there was still a claw stuck in his thigh—what's a brawl without a little risk?—but that wasn't why he'd turned serious.

He'd just seen his Sire turn into something from the far side of a nightmare. This wasn't a brawl. This wasn't even war. This was soddin' Armageddon, and that wasn't funny.

He would have run, but where was there to run to?

Option two: he was going to put his back to a wall and keep it there.

--

Oz and Tara had been separated from the main defensive position by the initial rush of tentacles.

Angelus had recognized the two witches and their magic as perhaps the greatest threat to his followers—the Scoobies' artillery, if you will. The brutish members of the Scourge couldn't counter. But Angelus was a schemer, and what is a schemer but an unscrupulous strategist? He had noticed something else: rather than separating and hitting his fighters from different angles, they'd stayed together. Why do that? Unless that togetherness was the key to their power?

A tentacle tipped with something like a chitinous scythe-blade had swung between the two witches, forcing them to part their hands. Willow had been driven all the way back to the Scoobies' main defensive position by a writhing forest of tentacles with pincers that snapped at her like bear traps.

Tara and Oz had been left at the mercy of the Scourge.

Oz had lost his Manriki-Gusari. Something with skin like stone had wrapped the chain around its arm and yanked it out of his hands. Now he had both knives out and he was backing to the wall with Tara behind him.

Oz felt the Beast rising inside him. He was terrified, he was furious, he was the Wolf trapped in a closing circle of enemies and the Wolf wanted to come out and start ripping. He growled at them through sharpening teeth.

No. He had to keep his cool. Stay in control. Stay coolie-cool boy. He had to protect—

"Oz!" Something with a face like strips of leather held together by string had grabbed Tara's arm, and it was dragging her away.

--

_Willow! Help me!_

Willow had been trying to push her way back through the tentacles to her lovers, but it was hopeless. She and Tara formed a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. When they were together, her power was not added to Tara's, but multiplied by it. On her own, against Angelus's impossible strength, there was nothing she could do. In fact, it was backing her up still further.

_Help me!_

An image flashed into her mind: a grinning monster pulling her in among other grinning monsters. Oz, reaching, holding out his hand, unable to reach.

Willow spun. Cordelia was standing closest to her, parrying a mouth-tentacle with her katana. Willow immediately noticed that Cordelia had brought the wakizashi as well, and had it hanging in a scabbard at her hip.

"Sorry!" Willow said as she snatched the short sword from its sheath. She turned back around, murmured a quick invocation to Kali—the wild, dancing goddess who drank the blood of demons--and poked the tip of her index finger with the sword's point, leaving a drop of her own blood behind.

_Tara! Hold on! I'm coming! Oz, please help her!_

--

_Oz, please help her!_

Telepathy is a funny thing. It carries the meaning, not just the message. Oz received not just Willow's request but: _I trust you. I can depend on you. I know this because I love you and I know you love me. I trust you to save Tara._ Then he was flooded with Willow's white-hot passionate, winter-blankets comfortable, spring-flowers hopeful love for Tara, and finally, the soul-blasting terror of losing (_either of you)_ her.

Oz would stand on his own pyre and let himself burn to keep Willow from feeling like that.

She didn't really need to ask, though. Tara was a friend (_packmate? Maybe almost_) and both the Man and the Wolf were in agreement on what had to happen.

Oz wished it didn't have to be this way, but the knives just weren't going to do it.

Seconds later, clawed, fanged, red-furred death landed among the Scourge.

The demon who had grabbed Tara vanished in a spray of rot-brown flesh and black blood, leaving only his hand clinging to her arm. It clutched once, spasmodically, then fell away.

Free, she stumbled back out of the melee and pressed her back to the wall. Her heart was jackhammering and her breath came hard. Her face and hands both felt icy, and she knew that if she had somewhere to look, she would see that her face was so pale it was almost translucent.

Oz did well—at first. The members of the Scourge were thrown off balance by the suddenness and ferocity of the attack. Oz slashed, ripped, and bit—and when a victim had a recognizable throat, he tore it out. For a moment, they did nothing but panic and flee—if they could have scattered, they would have. But it was too crowded—there was nowhere for them to escape to.

Desperate, they turned and fought.

A truncheon caught Oz in the head and sent him spinning to the floor, but he kept spinning once he touched down and swept his opponent's feet out from under him. Another tried to kick him while he was still down low, but he slipped under the kick and hamstrung the kicker's other leg. He leaped for his next opponent, but the demon collapsed out of his way, revealing the Scourge standing behind him: The Stone Man.

A battering-ram fist crashed into Oz and sent him sailing, and he would have flown clear to the wall if another demon hadn't snatched him out of the air with its tentacles. Two more grabbed on so the stunned werewolf couldn't move even if he did recover, and the Stone-Man advanced.

--

Willow slashed with the wakizashi. The sword was sharp and fine, but it didn't have the chopping weight or balance of a longer sword. Even if it did, Willow didn't have the strength or skill to put the weapon through one of the tentacles.

Kali took care of that.

Willow swung the wakizashi and cut nothing but air, but three tentacles fell away, cut cleanly and cauterized.

Angelus bellowed with pain.

Willow swung again.

--

_No!_

Tara's hand shot up into the right position to catch the Stone Man's descending fist—if she'd been in front of it.

The fist froze in its downswing, hanging in mid-air.

Either the Stone Man was phenomenally stupid and didn't even think of swinging his other fist--which she never would have been able to catch—or he realized what was happening and wanted to end it once and for all.

He kept pressing down.

The Stone Man wasn't as strong as Angelus, but he was plenty strong enough. It was like trying to lift a mountain. Without Willow, she couldn't hold it for long.

_So strong!_

She felt herself being driven to one knee.

_He's __**crushing**__ me!_

Oz was waking up. He began to thrash against his captors and yip for help.

All across the room, the rest of the Scooby Gang heard and tried to make their way toward the struggling werewolf, but Angelus and the Scourge closed in tighter, forcing them back. Willow redoubled her efforts and she was almost through, but it wasn't going to be in time.

_No! I'm not going to let this happen!_

Trembling from the effort, Tara began to slowly close her fist.

The Stone Man got a quizzical look on his face.

Points of energy appeared at Tara's fingertips, and they grew brighter and the resistance increased as her trembling hand tried to force itself closed.

The Stone Man's face suddenly took on an expression that might have been a gasp of agony if it was human.

_Crack_

Tara's fist closed and the light at her fingertips flashed from inside it and went out.

The Stone Man's fist shattered. It collapsed, clutching the splintered stump of its wrist, its mouth gaping in a silent scream.

The other Scourge stared in horror, and Oz nearly escaped with a sudden lunge. But the one who had clubbed him before was there, and knocked him back into the arms of its comrades, who started to pound him themselves.

"No!" Tara started to collapse, but then a smaller hand caught her own.

She didn't have to look. Strength surged into her and she looked up—Willow stood there, spattered with blood and holding a wakizashi in her other hand.

The second their hands touched, both of their eyes flared with blue light and their heads snapped toward the battle.

"Leave him _alone_!" They shouted in perfect unison, and the crowd of gray-clad demons parted like the Red Sea, flying through the air in all directions, leaving Oz standing alone in the trough.

Momentarily safe, Willow and Tara were able to survey the battle: Spike and Riley were both backed up to walls. Wesley, Faith, and Buffy were trying to cut their way through to Riley, but it might not be in time: Riley was tiring and the Scourge, sensing weak prey, were closing in. The Scoobies' main defensive position was surrounded. What seemed like hundreds of Angelus's tentacles—an impossible number, there was enough mass in those tentacles to make up dozens of Angeluses—pressed them from the front, while the Scourge closed in from the sides. Angel had regained his wits and was slowly regaining his feet, but he was still too weak to be a factor. Gunn, Giles, Xander, and Anya formed the front line. The men were out of ammunition and now depending on sword and axe to chop down whatever came near, but Anya was using her knowledge of the attacking demons to deliver sudden, lethal blows to weak points. The Scourge were coming to fear her the most—and were reacting accordingly, piling on the other sides of the perimeter and only hitting her with distance attacks. Joyce and Cordelia stood rear guard, protecting Angel and Kate against anything that got past the other four. Kate herself had put her borrowed weapon to good use, saving a member of the front line with a well-placed shot on three occasions.

It was bad. Real bad. As they watched, a tentacle lashed past the front line and knocked Joyce down. It was raising its tip—a scorpion's sting—for the death blow, but Giles made a desperate lunge and caught it on his cutlass.

The two witches looked at each other. Their communication was instant and total: they had to do it, they had to take the gamble. There was no other choice. If they didn't, none of them were getting out of here alive.

But oh, this was going to hurt.

--

_Down!_

The command cracked like a whip in the Scoobies' heads. Some heard fathers or teachers or coaches. Riley heard his drill sergeant. Oz heard the snarl of an Alpha wolf.

Without thinking, all of them dropped to the floor. Giles and Joyce instinctively took the air-raid positions they'd been taught in school, crouched on their knees with their hands covering their heads.

--

There are some spells that are extremely simple, despite the tremendous power they invoke. A line or two, spoken in the magic-user's vernacular. The reason for this is simple: the power for them is in the will, not the words, and an amateur couldn't summon the power to make the words mean anything.

The spell that Willow and Tara now used was one such.

They gripped their hands tighter, and the blue light in their eyes blazed up to white. A phantom wind swirled around them and then throughout the room, blowing scraps of paper and cloth before them.

For a brief moment their spirits flowed together and they were as one being, Tara's iron-strong gentleness and Willow's quiet joy. They called upon all of the sources of power and will that they had: their love for each other, their love for the other members of the Scooby Gang—Giles was the father neither of them had ever had, Joyce the mother, Buffy the sister, Xander the brother—to Willow, Angel was also a brother, as Riley was to Tara—Willow's love for Oz and what was that Tara was feeling for him?—The others, their friends—they called upon fear, fear of their own deaths and fear of losing their loved ones—they called on Rage, they called on pain.

"And all our lives through sex to death are goddess fire and dragon breath," Tara said, but she wasn't reciting a spell. She was declaring. She felt the fire burning in her own heart, the breath filling her lungs.

"We call upon the power of the Serpent of Old!" Willow shouted.

Then they felt it. The power. It was the power of the Dragon itself, power like no mortal should ever even touch, power like gripping a lightning bolt. It rushed into them and it filled them and it burned. Their blood was liquid fire, flowing through a body that was catching like dry grass in a firestorm. Their eyes boiled in their sockets and their nerves were white-hot wires. And they felt the power, still coming, still building.

Growing, building—

Coalescing in their stomachs, first nausea, then a ball of pain like a tiny sun.

Growing, building.

Coming up their throats, erupting like a geyser.

Coming.

_The pain!_

_Now!_

They both opened their mouths in perfect unison, and twin jets of green flame burst forth.

The nearest Scourge simply evaporated.

The Stone Man and the floor fused into a single blob of volcanic glass.

Of the dozens of Scourge present, perhaps half a dozen had realized what Tara and Willow were doing. The moment they'd heard the words that the witches were speaking, they'd dived for the nearest window.

Only they lived.

--

Angelus howled in agony as his tentacles were burned away. In desperation, he closed the maw in his chest and bit them off, shedding them like a gecko sheds its tail—better to lose part than all. They'd grow back.

He saw the fire-front approaching him—demons that didn't "dust" when they died exploding into ash as the witch-fire engulfed them.

Time to go.

He almost made it clean away, but the blast caught him as he sprinted out the back door and sent him sprawling, his back on fire. He saved himself by rolling on his back and smothering the flames. Then he escaped into the night, leaving only his ruined trench coat behind.

--

The power departed as quickly as it had come, leaving both witches hollowed-out and exhausted. They slumped against each other and let their hands drop apart.

"I don't ever wanna do that again," Willow moaned.

"That's okay," Tara panted. "I don't know if we could."

"Aaarrrh!"

Oz. They'd forgotten Oz. He was still in wolf-form, wild with fear of the fire, and he was coming right at them.

--

"Willow!"

"Red!"

Angel and Spike had heard Oz rising to his feet and pacing about wildly. They smelled his fear. They knew something was going to happen. Both made a limping, broken charge toward the witches and the werewolf.

--

Willow broke away and held up her hands. "Oz! Wait! No!"

_Magic! I have to hold him down, push him back—something!_

Nothing. She couldn't move a pencil in the state she was in. Someone she loved was about to kill someone else she loved, and there was nothing she could do.

--

Buffy raced across the room, Faith close on her heels.

_This isn't happening this isn't going to happen I won't let this happen have to run have to jump have to tackle_

_NOT GOING TO MAKE IT IN TIME!_

--

Oz leaped—

And Tara dropped to the ground.

Oz stopped short.

Tara rolled on her back and spread her arms like a puppy waiting for its belly to be scratched.

Oz dropped to his forepaws beside her and sniffed.

--

Angel came up short himself, and held out his hand to stop the other rescuers. "Wait!" He called.

--

Oz nudged Tara's face with his nose. She looked up into his eyes, squirmed on the ground, and _whined_.

--

"What the hell is she _doing_?" Faith demanded frantically.

"She's submitting," Angel said, awed.

"Of course," Wesley said, finally catching up with the Slayers. "Brilliant. Wolves don't fight to the death. Not against their own."

--

Tara wriggled and whined again, and Oz began to nuzzle her and lick her face.

With a shuddering sigh of relief, Willow dropped to her knees beside her lover and her ex. She took one of Tara's outstretched hands and began to stroke Oz's shoulders with her free hand.

Oz yipped happily and began to rub against her. The mate! She was back! After so long!

Willow didn't notice Oz's fur was thinning until she felt bare skin under her stroking hand. "Oz?"

The happy smile had dropped from Oz's face as soon as it had turned human. Instead, he was staring in horror at the blond girl beneath him.

"I'm all right," She said softly.

He nodded, then closed his eyes tightly and looked away from both witches.

"Clothes, please," he murmured.

"You saved me," Tara said. "If it hadn't been for the fire, you never would have—"

"Listen to her," Willow pleaded. "If _she_ says it's okay—"

Oz stood up and turned away from them, completely unmindful of his audience. "Clothes, please," he repeated sharply.

"Don't look at me," Spike muttered, although no one was until he spoke up and walked away. "I already loaned out me leather."

"Here," Angel said, pulling off his own trench coat. "There's a hole in it, but it's better than nothing."

Oz took the coat with a nod and a "Thanks." Without another word, he walked past the assembled Scoobies, ignoring several attempts to reach out to him, and stood by himself in the doorway. He was upset, but not fool enough to run out by himself into a night that still sheltered Angelus.

The emergency past, attention was turned to Angel, Riley, and Kate.

Riley was found to be mostly okay. He'd suffered a few defense wounds—shallow slashes and scratches on his forearms, for the most part—and a bruise here and there.

Angel insisted that he was okay, too. Or soon would be. Impalement was never fun, but it had happened before, and he'd had worse. At least the wound was clean—no venom or any nastiness like that. A good swallow of blood and a few hours, and he'd be good as new. As to what had made him scream so and sent him delirious if the tentacle itself didn't have any dirty tricks…he'd explain later.

Kate was a different story

--

While the wounded were being seen to by those who knew how, others turned to things that were less urgent, but important nonetheless.

--

"What were you thinking?" Buffy yelled. "Were you _crazy_?"

Joyce and Xander looked at each other and shifted their feet uncomfortably. It was unusual for Xander to be on _this_ side of this lecture, unprecedented for Joyce. They were finding that they didn't like it very much.

"We were just trying to help," Joyce protested.

"And you succeeded!" Buffy shouted, sounding as if she was infuriated by this fact. "Spectacularly! You saved Angel's life, and I can't ever thank you enough for that!"

Xander and Joyce looked at each other again, this time in total, fogbound incomprehension.

Buffy got up in their faces, waving her arms in a fury of frustration, as if they were failing to comprehend that one and one did not equal seventy-eight. "But you took on _Angelus_! _Yourselves_! That's what Champions are for! What would I do if I lost either one of you?"

That sounded good. But it was still going by so fast. Their faces were still blank masks of confusion, but hope started to grow in their hearts.

"You both make me so mad I could break I-beams!" She ranted. "But I love you more than anything else in the world! Did you think you needed to prove something to me? Do you think that I wanted to punish you?"

Both of them nodded mutely.

"Well I didn't!" She snapped, nearly taking the tip of Xander's nose off with the snap of her teeth. "All I wanted was a friggin' apology! Is that so hard to say? 'I'm sorry'? I would have forgiven you just as much!"

She paused, glaring at them and panting.

"Does…that mean…we're forgiven?" Xander asked tentatively.

Buffy raised her eyes to Heaven. "Yes. Yes, damn it. It does. If…you just…_say_ it."

It was at this point that anyone who had been watching in morbid, flaming-car-crash fascination, turned away. Anya had to be turned away forcibly by Giles.

The words almost came blurting out of Xander's mouth, but he stopped them. He knew he was being given a chance that he didn't really deserve, and he had to do it right. He took a deep breath, and took it slow. "Once upon a time, I said that I hadn't been the best of friends where Angel was concerned. You, and Angel…and Belial…have pointed out to me that might have been a little bit of an understatement. Fact is, I treated you like crap. I have an armada of reasons why I did it, and not one of 'em floats. Here you are, forgiving me two days after the fact, and I stayed angry at you for a whole year. I don't know what I did to deserve you, but it must have been something great. Thanks. And I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too, honey," Joyce said. How long had she kept berating Buffy for running away? Right up until graduation day, hadn't it been? Now that same girl was extending her own forgiveness not two days after discovering her betrayal. She didn't know where Buffy got it—if either she or Hank had possessed it, their marriage just may have lasted. "Mr. Giles told me that in your…family, you can't turn around without hurting each other, and your best intentions are the ones that get you in the most trouble. But not all of my intentions were so good. Some were, but others…like Xander said, some just don't float. I…you deserved so much better than…you saved the world, and you never even got a thank you. I'm so sorry."

Buffy let out a deep, relieved sigh. "Finally," she said. "It's been hard making it through these past few days without you two for support," she admitted. They stood in silence for another moment, then she spoke up again in a small, embarrassed voice: "Um…can I have a hug now?"

They were only too happy to oblige. But as the two of them squeezed her between them in a way that Buffy sadly remembered involving both of her parents, Joyce whispered in her ear.

"Buffy…I have something to tell you," She said.

"What?"

"We didn't help Angel to impress you," She answered.

Buffy stared back at her quizzically. "Why'd you do it, then?"

"We helped Angel to help Angel," Xander explained.

The next moment, both of them were nearly crushed by a ferocious, joyfully teary-eyed Slayer hug.

--

Kate was the most seriously injured. Most of the Asclepian's half-finished work, at least on her knee, had been undone by her escape attempt. Once the battle had ended, her consciousness had started to gray and become fuzzy around the edges.

Angel's face loomed at her out of the fog that was filling her vision.

"Angel?"

"I'm here, Kate. You're going to be okay."

"Who was he, Angel? He said he was you…said he was Angelus."

"He _was_ Angelus. He—"

"Was pulled out of you by the devil?" She finished. "He said that too. But that's crazy, that can't happen."

The concrete she was lying on was beginning to feel distinctly comfortable. Angel's face was far above her, and his voice seemed to be coming from miles away. "I'm sleepy," she announced.

Angel's distant face became alarmed. "Sleepy? Just hang on, Kate. We'll get you some help."

"Hang on? I'm not going anywhere. I'm just a little sleepy…"

With that, the gray filled her mind and she slept.

--

"She's in shock," Angel announced. "We need to get her to a hospital." He slid his hands under her limp form, but Wesley caught his shoulder.

"You still have a hole through your torso that's two fingers wide," Wesley reminded him. "Granted, that's an improvement over the size of my palm, but you should still let someone else carry her."

--

Half an hour later, a young, bespectacled man with a British accent, and an even younger African-American man delivered Officer Kate Lockley to the emergency room. They vanished back into the night as quickly as they had come, leaving only a note explaining the patient's identity and how they'd found her in an alley across the street from the Benton Arms fire.

_5 AM_

Dawn was already breaking as the Scooby Gang stumbled into the Hyperion. No discussion was made of the battle they had just completed or strategy for the future. They were exhausted—some were all but drunk from their need for sleep. What else could be expected? In three days of extremely strenuous activity, they'd only had a few stolen hours of sleep.

An unspoken agreement to discuss those things after they slept was formed as they all broke for the rooms.

--

_Knock, knock, knock_

Giles rolled toward the door. "Yes?" he called sleepily.

"May I come in, Rupert?" A whispered voice called in return.

"Oh—Joyce! Certainly."

The elder Summers woman opened the door slowly, entered on stocking feet, and closed the door carefully, holding the knob turned until it was time to let the latch slide back into place. All of this was done with the air of a mother trying not to wake the children—which Giles supposed was exactly what Joyce was at the moment.

He propped himself up on his elbow and put on his glasses. "Is there something I can help you with?" He asked.

"Maybe," she answered. "I'll get to it in a moment. First, I wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"You were right," she said, a beatific smile spreading on her face.

His sleep-starved mind was running on fumes, and it was running slow. "About what?"

"Buffy," she answered. "I was _certain_ that she'd never forgive me, but—" She gave a 'here we are' shrug, but the smile never left her face.

"Yes," Giles agreed. "Buffy is a remarkable young woman."

She nodded in agreement. "Our daughter is turning out wonderfully."

He was already nodding in agreement himself when it hit him what she had said. He froze, and his eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?" He said in a choked voice.

Joyce crossed the room and sat down on the bed. "A father isn't a man who creates a child, Rupert," she said. "He's the man who raises her. Even when we were married, Hank wasn't much of a father to Buffy. You've only known her since we came to Sunnydale, but you're already much more of one."

"I'm…honored to hear you say so," he said. "I would never mean to presume, of course—"

"You never did," she reassured him. "Now we come to what you can do for me."

"Yes?" He asked warily. "What would that be?"

She took a deep breath. Apparently, it wasn't something entirely easy for her to ask, and he recognized the look on her face as the one Buffy assumed when she was determined to be bold about something. "I've been pretty self-sufficient since I moved to Sunnydale, Rupert. I haven't had sex since that night with the band candy, and I haven't slept in a man's arms since before Hank and I divorced. But these last couple days…'self-sufficient' just won't get me through. I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm exhausted, too. But I just can't face an empty bed after everything that's happened."

Dumbstruck, Giles answered her the only way that he could.

He drew back the covers.

--

Charles Gunn was pretty much as exhausted as he had ever been. He'd been in street fights, but even against supernatural beings they were nasty, brutal, and short. Pitched battle against an army of demons was something new. His arms and shoulders didn't just _ache_, they _burned_, and his back felt like it had turned to stone. Or maybe glass. There was no _way_ he was making it back to the squatter.

He took the first room he came to on the floor above Angel's guests. If he'd been someone else, and he'd come from somewhere else, he might have just left the door open and fallen onto the bed. But he wasn't, and he hadn't. He not only closed the door, he locked it.

_Then _he fell onto the bed. When he landed, though, the bed _squealed_ and the next instant he was facedown on the floor, his left arm twisted up behind his back and a hand like a vice-clamp gripping his neck and forcing his nose into the carpet.

"Hi," he muffled into the shag. "Faith, right?"

His assailant paused for a moment, then released him. "Yeah. Sorry, G. I mean, Gunn." She muttered something that sounded like "Damn, too many G's around here," then continued. "You just kinda surprised me. And that's kinda what I do when I'm surprised."

Gunn slowly climbed to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck. "Bet it never happens twice," he said.

"One way or another," she agreed.

"So what're you doing up here?" He asked. "Most of the guests are downstairs."

"Well, I don't hang with them _all_ the time," she said. "I need my space, you know?"

"Yeah, actually, I do," He said. "I'll just find another room."

"You don't have to go," she said quickly. He turned back to her, and he had a strange, watchful, questioning look that reminded her of Angel on his face. She felt herself blush and silently cursed. _Shy._ She hadn't felt shy in a long time. But then, she hadn't dealt with a guy who might want more than to get into her britches in a long time, either. That look, like Angel's, asked too much of her. "If you don't want to," she finished lamely.

Suddenly, his face lit up with a broad grin that was _entirely_ unlike anything she'd ever seen on Angel. "Sister, there is nothing I want less." As if to prove it, he kicked his boots off, swung one leg up and dropped onto the bed, then rolled to the other side to give her room. She didn't use much of that room, however. She curled up to his side, resting her head on his shoulder as he put his arm around hers.

She waited for his other hand to come into play, to start grabbing for things. But it never did.

Suddenly, she was wide awake. Getting done and getting gone was one thing. Sleeping with a guy was quite another. It meant—well, it meant that you were sleeping, and he might wake up first, and then he could do, well, anything he damn well pleased, couldn't he?

Besides, even if that wasn't a factor, you'd still wake up together, and that was a definite turn-off. Stubble and morning breath. Gross.

She began to stroke his chest. "Hey," she said.

"Yeah?" He said fuzzily. He must have been starting to drift off. Which confused her even more. He was in bed with a girl, and he actually intended to just sleep? That was a first.

Her hand started a slow pilgrimage down his torso. "We don't have to go to sleep right away, you know."

He grinned up at her. "No?"

She got up on her elbow and shook her head. "No. We could have a little fun first." She grinned. "Bump the headboard a little. I'm always horny after a fight."

Belly.

He chuckled, then his face fell. "Oh, damn. Wait. I don't have any protection."

Beltline. "How many guys has that ever stopped?"

He caught her hand. "It stops me," he said. His voice wasn't harsh. It was soft and even a little kind, but she knew right away that he meant it—and this was one guy who didn't change his mind when he meant it.

Her face flaming, she yanked her hand out of his and sat up. Good reason or not, rejection was still rejection. And it was still humiliating. "Yeah, well babies aren't a worry for me anymore," she snapped. Then she froze. _Oh, fuck. Why in hell did I tell him that? _

He was silent for a long moment, and she waited for him to decide _this bitch is crazy_ and get up and go. Instead, he asked: "Who was he?"

"What?"

He leaned up on his elbow and looked her in the eye. "You said 'anymore', so it once was. If it wasn't cancer—and you seem too young for that—then a guy was involved. Disease or damage, you probably got it from some guy."

The night and exhaustion have a way of stripping the heart bare. Perhaps that's why people make love in beds. In any case, Faith heard herself answering before she even had time to think about it: "His name was Frank. He was just this…_guy_ my mom was dating. I was eleven."

She waited for the pity, the promises that it would all be all right, accompanied by the sidelong, wary look at the messed-up, broken girl. Instead, he just nodded. "The same thing happened to Alonna," he said.

"Who?"

"My sister." He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. She settled back down onto her elbow. "It was the first time I ever failed to protect her. I killed the fucker who did it—just one more pimp with his head bashed in by some junkie, you know? And then I swore it would never happen again."

"Did it?" She asked.

"Once," he answered. "And it was the last time."

Anyone else might have asked what he meant, or just assumed that he had reinforced his vow. But she knew better. She knew _just_ what he meant. She stayed silent. What was there to say?

"But hey, enough of this bad shit, huh?" He said. "Let's get some sleep. Now, don't get me wrong, 'cause you are _damn_ fine, and I may change my mind when we wake up, but for now, let's _just_ sleep."

"Sounds good," she said. If she were someone else, she might have been confused by his abrupt shift. But it made perfect sense to her: they'd seen each other's scars. Why stare and pick at them? She rolled back to the mattress and put her back to him so they could spoon.

As he did so, he sleepily muttered "It's safer that way, anyway."

Faith stiffened. In her head, she knew that anyone could pick up an STD. One time and bad luck was all it took. But in her experience, it had been mostly used as a rhetorical stone to throw, part of an accusation that she was skanky. Grounds to ostracize her. She couldn't count the number of times she'd heard "I don't want to catch something" or even "I don't want my dick to fall off" in her one year of high school.

"You don't know where I've been," he finished. Then his breathing became deep and regular.

For the first time in her life, Faith drifted into a sound sleep with a man's arm around her.

--

_Knock, knock, knock_

"Oz, please let us in. We need to talk to you."

_Knock, knock, knock_

"Oz, can you hear us?"

Of course he could hear them. How could he not? If he listened carefully, he could hear their heartbeats. But he refused to listen. Facts were facts, and he didn't want them trying to make him feel better about those facts. Both the Man and the Wolf hated lies.

So he just lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his hands folded on his chest, and ignored them.

"He can hear us. He's just not paying attention. He makes up his mind, and he refuses to talk about it any more."

Damn. Willow usually wasn't so good at reading him. But then, he supposed this was relatively billboard.

Oh, well. What was she going to do about it?

The security chain suddenly slid sideways and popped out of its slot with a click.

Oh. Yeah. _That's_ what she's going to do about it.

"Okay, okay," he called as he levered himself up off the bed. "I'm coming."

He crossed the room, and in very sharp, abrupt, un-Ozlike motions, he turned the deadbolt and flung the door open. Those three actions cost him the last of what remained of his strength, and he leaned drunkenly against the doorjamb.

Willow and Tara stood outside. Actually, "stood" might have been the wrong word. They were actually leaning up against each other, using the mutual pressure to keep from falling. They were pale, hollow-eyed, and haggard. He suspected that he didn't look much better.

"Go away," he said. He was too tired to be polite.

"Not until we talk to you," Willow said. Then she pointed at herself. "Resolve face, Oz."

And it was. If he closed the door, they would use strength they couldn't spare to open it. So he stepped back and pushed swung the door open for them. "Come in."

They obeyed, coming in and crossing to the bed, where they sat down.

"You should be in bed," he said as he closed and locked the door again.

"But we are," Tara said, pulling a corner of blanket over her lap to make the statement true.

He was about to snap "You know what I mean" when he realized that Tara had made a joke. A pretty weak joke, but the first one he'd heard her speak.

Bad timing.

"Not funny," he said. Tara's face fell. Willow patted her on the back and looked up at him reproachfully. Good. He could live with them being mad at him if they'd just _leave_. "Why are you here?" He demanded.

"We _wanted_ to talk to you about this _morning_, Rude-o," Willow snapped.

"Nothing to say," Oz said, starting to pace. He _would not_ sit down on the bed with them.

"I wanted to thank you for saving—" Tara began.

"Stop," Oz commanded, stopping short and cutting her off with a flat sweep of his hands. "Just stop. What _happened _is I almost _killed_ you. _Again_."

"But it wasn't you," Willow protested. "It was the Wolf."

"And even the Wolf wouldn't have done it if it wasn't so scared of the fire," Tara added.

"Kinda the point," Oz said, resuming his pacing. "If it was an accident or mistake on my part, I could learn from it and promise not to do it again. But it's something I can't control—"

"And you can't stand that, can you," Willow said, her anger rising. "You always have to be so cool, so detached, so _in control_."

Oz ignored her. "—Except to turn it on and off, and sometimes not even that. I'm dangerous."

"So's Angel," Willow said, getting to her feet and advancing on her first love. "So's Spike. So's Faith. Hell, so is Buffy, so is Tara, so am _I_! We're a bunch of really dangerous people, Oz! Nobody else is running!"

"Stop it," Tara whispered.

"Angel did," Oz said. "For the same reason I did: he couldn't always decide who he was dangerous _to_. Now he can. I still can't. You're all dynamite. I'm nitro. Even if you make a mistake and blow up something you didn't mean to, you can learn from that mistake—"

"If we survive it," Willow countered.

"St-stop ih-ih-it."

"—And avoid it later on. Me? There's nothing to learn. I'm just a big boom waiting to happen. That's why, when this is over, I'm getting back in that van and heading for Montreal."

"No, you're not!" Willow shouted. "You have a problem, and I'm going to help you with it! Then you can leave, if you want. That's what love _means_. You'd remember that if you weren't too busy protecting me from yourself to care!"

"St-st-st-st-stop ih-ih-ih-ih-it! Tara shouted.

Willow whirled, slapping her hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God, Tara, I'm _sorry_. I didn't mean—"

"It's all right, Willow," Tara said, waving the apologies down. "It's all right."

"It's _not_," Willow insisted, sitting down and taking her hand. "I shouldn't have said that."

"You never forget your first love," Tara said, smiling wanly. "I still carry a torch for Jenny Liederman."

If they'd had more energy, they might have broken down into peals of laughter. As it was, Willow smiled gratefully, and Oz just gave a chuckle and a grin.

Tara smiled along with them, then her face turned serious. "Want to make sure something like this morning never happens again?" She asked.

The other two froze, staring at her.

Finally, Oz nodded. "Yeah."

Tara waved them over to bed. Willow sat back down beside her, and Oz took a seat on the other side of Willow, where he took her hand and gripped it with silent, but frantic hope. He was surprised but pleased when she gripped back.

"I told you that when I found out about you, I started studying werewolves," Tara explained. "I was hoping to find a cure. I'd never known any werewolves before, and I wanted to help."

"And you found one?" Willow asked eagerly.

"Not exactly."

Willow and Oz's faces fell.

"I found the name of a spell that bonds your spirit with the Wolf. You change when you want to, and you keep your mind when you do." Their faces rose again. Willow's eyes and mouth gaped in joyful astonishment, and Oz almost had an expression. "The book I had didn't have the spell in it, but it had the name of a book that did—and I saw that book on the shelves when I was looking at Mr. Pryce's gun cabinet."

Willow whirled to Oz. "That's wonderful! Isn't she amazing? We can—"

Oz waved her down with his free hand. "The catch?" He asked.

Tara chewed on her lip a little before answering. "You and the Wolf become one," she answered at last. "You get a few of its instincts, but you can take those out on some rabbits and squirrels. The big catch is that you'll always be a werewolf. No cures."

Oz sat for a long moment, looking at his lap, contemplating that. "But it becomes a superpower," he mused. Then he looked back up at Tara. "I get to choose who I'm dangerous to."

She nodded.

"I'm in."

Willow squealed in delight and hugged first Tara, then Oz, then each of them several more times.

"When can we do it?" He asked once Willow had settled on squeezing both of them at once.

"Midnight," Tara answered.

"Of course," Willow said. "The moment when one day becomes another—the moment of change. We can do it tonight if you want."

Oz nodded. "Sounds good," he said. "Better rest up."

The two witches agreed that was a good idea, but the trek back to their room seemed immeasurably long, and they were reluctant to start it. They dawdled just a bit, chatting—Oz accepted Tara's gratitude for saving her that morning.

In the end, they wound up sleeping curled up together like puppies on Oz's bed.

--

Angel took a blood bag from his refrigerator, bit into it, and drank the whole pint cold.

A moment later, he fell onto his bed, asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. But that sleep was neither sound nor restful: he descended from consciousness into fevered dreams of fire and blood and shadow.

Floors above, Buffy began to writhe and moan in her sleep.

Riley stirred to half-wakefulness beside her and began to stroke her back and make comforting noises: "Shhh…shhh…it's okay. It's just a dream. You're safe here…I'm with you, your family's all around…it's all right…"

Did some part of him, some instinct unfettered by his conscious mind in his semi-conscious state, realize what was happening? If so, he didn't remember when he awoke. In fact, he never quite remembered what he said to calm Buffy down.

It was simply this: "You, too, Big Man. They're just dreams. Whatever he showed you, we aren't going to let it happen. We'll keep her safe."

In his apartment, Angel settled into his bed—and a deep sleep—with a faint smile on his lips.

In their room, a similar smile drifted across Buffy's face as she, too, settled back into sleep. Riley draped a sheltering arm over her, and joined them in dreams.

And for a time, the Hyperion slept.

**Wolfram & Hart **

"Hey, Lefty."

Lindsey jumped, almost dropping the briefs he was carrying, but he recovered himself quickly. "Angelus," he said, turning to the figure who was sitting in a shadowed corner of his office. This explained why the blinds were drawn. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"Not really," Angelus replied, rising from his comfortable armchair and approaching his attorney. "I just stopped by to check your progress."

Then he emerged from the shadows, and Lindsey gasped. "My god, what _happened_?" he exclaimed.

Angelus shrugged. A jagged borderline ran down the center of his face. On one side, his skin was human-colored, if pale. On the other, his skin was the color of chalk. Someone had pressed a cross into his face. No, it must have been a Crucifix—a small, but perfectly detailed image of Christ was imprinted even deeper into his flesh. Worse, that side of his face showed a vague brow-ridge, as if it was part way to its demon form. Perhaps that was so—scar tissue twisted that side of his lips into a snarl, revealing sharper teeth that weren't quite fangs.

"I took a hit, Lefty," Angelus explained. "I had my eye on the wrong hand, and they caught me off guard. The little witches were a lot more powerful than I thought."

Lindsey set the briefs down and turned to his new primary client. "How bad is it?" He asked.

"I'm okay," Angelus replied. "Or I will be in a few hours. I ran into a cop car almost right away, and I ate both of them—"

"You what?" Cop-killing was difficult for even Wolfram & Hart to cover up. The authorities couldn't be bought in a situation like that, and making investigators "disappear" just exacerbated the problem.

Angelus ignored the question. "Then I came here—"

"Looking like _that_?"

"Hey," Angelus snapped. "Either they know what I am, in which case they're not the people that you have to worry about, or they thought I was just some guy with burn scars on his face. Either way, no problem. So I slept in here for a few hours, then I ate the first couple interns that came in this morning." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, to a pile in the corner that Lindsey hadn't noticed before.

"You did this in my _office_?" Lindsey demanded as he hurried over to investigate. He cursed aloud when he saw the mess Angelus had left for him. Six of them. Five looked like normal vampire attacks—pale, with bite wounds in their necks. But the sixth…he had to fight hard to keep his breakfast down. He wouldn't have been able to recognize her if she hadn't still had her company ID pinned to what remained of her blouse. "Oh, god," he choked. "Carrie."

"Yeah," Angelus said. "I was actually pretty full by that time, so I decided to play with my food a little. You know I just had to take advantage of a place that's magically soundproofed. Besides, I figure that you've had some experience in cleaning up messes like this."

Lindsey took a deep breath. He'd be dead within seconds of showing any kind of hostility to this…creature. If he was lucky. "Yes," He said evenly. "I have."

"Good. Now, the real problem is that almost the entire vanguard was killed. When is the main force going to arrive?"

The _entire_ vanguard? The entire vanguard of the _Scourge_? These little heroes were more powerful than Lindsey had thought. Maybe they even had a chance. He kept his hope off his face as he answered. "About half of them are here now. We're moving them into the warehouses as we speak. The rest are en route."

"Good."

"Are you planning a counterattack?" Lindsey asked.

Angelus shook his head. "Uh-uh. I was stupid once. Not again. I'm just going to sit back and let nature take its course. By tomorrow night, I'll be invincible. _Then_ I'll deal with them."

--

Lindsey called a limousine and had Angelus taken to the warehouses where his troops awaited him. Then he called the "special" janitorial crew. Within a few hours, five unfortunate young, rich students would be discovered in various spots about the city, the victims of muggers, or accidents, or random crackheads. Lindsey didn't really care.

That left Carrie.

They didn't have to cover up Carrie's death. They could just lose it. If she had any relatives, they didn't give enough of a damn to follow up on her.

It was a trite thing to say, but Caroline Ramsey reminded Lindsey of himself at that age. She'd dragged herself out of hopeless poverty by her teeth. He had taken her as much under his wing as company policy allowed, and he'd come to admire her sheer will. She would have been a marvelous lawyer—but not at Wolfram & Hart, Lindsey suspected. She was just a little too ethical.

After he'd ordered an oak casket, a marble headstone (Inscription: Caroline Ramsey 1980-2001. You Deserved a Better Chance), and several bouquets of flowers for her, he got down to work.

Angelus wasn't even a paying client. Even if he was, Lindsey had taken enough.

Time to put a little sand in his engine.

--

Over the next twenty-four hours, a truly fantastic string of accidents and bad luck befell the incoming half of the Scourge. Several cargo planes carrying barrels of fuel crashed into several different mountains. The pilots managed to parachute to safety. Of course, members of the Scourge were the real cargo. There were just enough barrels of fuel to make the crash—as Willow would say—extra flamey.

Several cargo ships sank. Some of the Scourge aboard might have been able to make it to shore, if someone hadn't alerted some of the Things in the deep-ocean trenches that a shipment of food was on its way.

Finally, several trucks belonging to a Wolfram & Hart subsidiary just exploded while their drivers happened to be in truck stops. Tsk, tsk. Must be industrial sabotage by rival mages. We'll try to track that down for you.

Twenty-four hours after Angelus left Lindsey with a pile of bodies in his office, the only members of the Scourge left alive on Earth were headquartered in those warehouses in LA. They were down to half their former strength, but there were still hundreds of them.

Time to call in some help.

**Breakfast**

"Angel?"

Someone was shaking him.

"Angel,"

A woman's voice. Familiar. Smell. Also familiar. Similar to mate's, but not the same.

"Angel," she called, both her voice and her shaking growing more insistent. But waking was difficult. He was sleeping soundly for the first time in decades, and pulling himself free from the warm dark of sleep was like trying to pull himself free from a tar pit.

"Muh?" He finally rolled toward the person shaking him, opening his eyes just a slit.

_Joyce?_

His eyes flew the rest of the way open.

"Good morning, Angel. Or good afternoon. Or evening. Anyway, hi."

"Joyce?" He sat halfway up and stared at her in sleepy confusion. "Can I help you?"

"Where's your kitchen?" She asked.

"Huh? My--? Uh, I have a stove right—" he pointed over his shoulder, toward his apartment's kitchenette.

She gave a worried frown. "I was hoping for something bigger. Does the hotel have a kitchen? For room service or something?"

"Uh…yes it does. But what do you want it for?"

"I want to make breakfast," she answered.

Angel was about to ask why that required a larger kitchen than his, when his mind finally woke up and his eyes widened. "Breakfast? For _all_ of them?" He asked.

She nodded.

"That's an awful lot of breakfast," he said. "You know, I'm the only one who actually lives here. There's nothing here that's really suitable for human consumption."

"I ordered some groceries," she replied. "They should be here soon."

That brought him up short. He wanted to ask her "Where the hell is this coming from?" Instead, he softened it to "What gave you this idea?"

She sighed and sat down on the bed beside him. "Do you know what Faith said to me after the battle?"

He shook his head.

"She said 'You were pretty cool out there, Mrs. S. I wish my mom had been like you'. Mind you, this is _after_ Buffy has yelled at Xander and I."

"Buffy's overprotective," Angel said. "I can't say I'm innocent of it, either. I think it goes with being a Champion. Fact is, you did better against Angelus than I did."

"Thank you," she said. "But that's beside my point. You've known these kids for about five years now, right?"

"Give or take," he answered. He decided not to mention Whistler showing Buffy to him on the day she became the Slayer, and how he had fallen in love with her on that day. His relationship with his (_Saints preserve us and Devil brought the tidings_) mother-in-law was still a bit precarious.

"Have you ever gotten the impression that they were raised by wolves?" Joyce asked.

_Now_ Angel understood what she was getting at. He nodded. "Actually, some of them might have been better off with the wolves," he said. "I hear they're pretty good parents."

"I know," Joyce said, now nodding her own eager agreement. "Willow came out to me before she did to her own parents. Xander seems to suffer 'Slaying Bruises' far less often now that he's moved out of his parents' basement. Tara—well, you probably heard—"

Angel nodded. He'd heard of the Maclays' attempt to--recapture was the only word that he could think of for it—Tara. His own father had been an impossibly demanding and unsupportive man, who perhaps had something in common with Xander's. A hot temper, a quick hand and a harsh tongue could be understood, even if they couldn't be condoned. But Mr. Maclay's deliberate, calculated psychological cruelty to his own daughter would never make sense.

"—and now Faith! I want to take care of them," she declared. "They have a surrogate father in Rupert. I think they've half-adopted me as their mother already."

"And they haven't eaten anything but McDonald's and chicken wings for two days—" He prompted.

"Time for a proper meal," she finished.

"Sounds good," he said, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and putting his feet down on the floor. "Just let me change my clothes, and I'll help."

"Oh, you don't have to—"

"But I want to," he said. "You'll be surprised, I'm actually pretty good. Just because I don't _have_ to eat doesn't mean I can't." He paused, listening. "Better go down front," he said. "Your groceries are here. I'll meet you in the lobby."

--

The rest of the Scooby Gang woke up to the smell of cooking.

Xander and Faith led the charge down the stairs, followed _very_ closely by Gunn and Riley, with the rest following in a straggling parade behind. Giles and Wesley brought up the rear, working very hard to maintain their stoicism in the face of rumbling bellies and the smell of bacon, toast, sausage, coffee—and were those _pancakes_? Then a teapot started to whistle and Wesley's reserve broke. He rushed down the stairs after the younger members of the group—and Spike—while Giles managed to restrain himself to quickening only to a trot.

The whole mob stormed the kitchen, where there was indeed coffee, and bacon, and toast, and sausage, and even pancakes. There was also milk, and juice, and fruit, and Angel—wearing a "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" apron was working on some scrambled eggs. There was even a pot of water on the stove where two pints of blood were heating like baby formula.

Joyce flipped the last of a stack of pancakes onto a plate, turned to the salivating crowd, and held it up. "Okay," she said. "First lot's blueberry. Who wants some?"

--

"Ohhhhyeah," Faith moaned in satisfaction as she set her plate on the lobby floor and pushed it away. "I don't think I've _ever_ been this full."

"Good," Joyce said. "Everyone else had enough?" She called.

"Everyone else," who were scattered about the lobby—some on the chairs, some on the stairs, some on the floor—grunted or moaned something vaguely affirmative. Only Giles managed something coherent, which was to say "Couldn't have another bite."

"Good," Angel said, emerging from the kitchen with a convenience store gulp-cup in his hand. "Because there aren't any bites left." He crossed to the couches and sat down in the only open space, which was beside Tara. "So." he said. "I hate to say it, but I guess it's time to get down to business."

Surprisingly, it was Cordelia who spoke first. "Okay. Who here thinks that there aren't still a lot more Scourge where those came from?" She asked, raising her hand.

Riley, Joyce, and a few others who were more ignorant in the ways of demons, had thought exactly that. Seeing the grim-faced certainty of those who were more knowledgeable, they said nothing about it.

"And Tara and I can't use the dragonfire again anytime soon," Willow said. "Even if we had the power, we still have to do a few ceremonies to get permission."

Several members of the group stared at he quizzically.

"Permission?" Xander asked.

"Dragon is really particular about who calls on him," Willow explained. "If he doesn't recall giving you his number, he gets cranky."

"Ah," Xander said. "I see—cranky as in slam down the phone and leave you with a headache cranky, or cranky as in explosive, flamey death cranky?"

"Depends on when you catch him," Willow shrugged.

"We need reinforcements," Riley said.

"I agree," Giles said. "Do you have any allies that you can muster?" He asked Angel.

"I do," Gunn said. "My boys'd be _happy_ to go out and whup some ass, rather than sit at home and wait for the army of demons to come to us."

"We might also be able to muster an army of demons of our own," Wesley suggested. "If any cause can get demons to fight beside humans, it's resistance against the Scourge." He turned to Angel. "We should talk to Lorne."

Angel nodded. "We should," he said. "But the Scourge isn't what I'm really worried about right now." He could feel their stares of amazement. "We've been thinking about Angelus all wrong," he explained. "We've been acting like he's a super-vampire of some sort. Just like he always was, except maybe a little moreso. Undiluted or upgraded, or whatever, and that's not how it is."

"So he's new and improved," Faith said. "What's the big whoop? He can still be killed."

"Perhaps not," Wesley said. "Xander staked him in the heart, and he was set on fire twice. Once with magic, once with a holy object. It seems the traditional methods of killing vampires are insufficient for a pure vampire demon."

"That's just it," Angel said. "We keep focusing on the 'vampire' part of it, and forget about the Pure Demon." He tapped his temple. "He gave me a vision when he had me pinned to the wall. It burned out our connection. I can't feel him anymore. But I was able to sense one very important thing before it went:"

He paused to choose his words, but no one interrupted. They were all paying rapt attention. "Whatever humanity he might have had from me is fading. Soon there'll be no more jokes, no more games—he'll be just a primal force of destruction." He took a deep, unnecessary breath. "He's an Old One now," he said. "And I don't think he's even close to his full potential—or his final form."

Faith was the first to break the silence this time. "Shiiiit." She breathed.

"I'll meet your 'shit' and raise you a 'Bugger me'," Giles agreed. The people who knew what that meant stared at him in shock. "Did this vision show you anything else?" He asked.

Angel described the vision in detail, and by the end none of his listeners were surprised that whatever part of his mind it was that was connected to Angelus had been destroyed. Bridges burned. Or collapsed under too much weight.

"So…" Buffy began. "He's an Old One." The words tasted strange in her mouth when spoken in the present tense. She'd heard them often enough from Giles, but they'd always seemed…remote. An ancient, forgotten nightmare that overshadowed her own nightmares of vampires and demons. The world's nightmare. It had always been a given that, if the Old Ones got in, the battle was already lost. "He's an Old One," she repeated. "And he has a novel plan for destroying the world. Do we have a tactical on it?" she asked. "Could it work?"

"We don't know," Giles answered. "But we have to assume it can."

"An Old One," Xander said, shaking his head. "How do you fight something like that?" His head stopped in mid-shake, and turned toward Anya. One by one, everyone else's followed.

She looked back at all of them blankly. "What?"

"You told us we should learn to ask you about these things," Xander said with deliberate patience. "Well, we're asking."

"You expect _me_ to know how to fight an Old One?"

"It's worth a shot," Xander replied evenly.

"Sorry," she said. "Your shot missed. I was only a demon for twelve hundred years. The Old Ones have been gone about a hundred times longer than that."

"Damn," Angel said. "If only the Oracles were still alive."

"The who?" Buffy asked.

"The Oracles," he explained. "Spokesbeings for the Powers That Be. Sometimes, when I needed extra information, I could go to them. But a demon killed them last spring."

The rest of the people present looked a bit more crestfallen at this pre-closed option, but Wesley suddenly brightened. "Of course! The Eyes of the Seer!" He blurted.

"Beg your pardon?" Angel asked.

"We need a channel to the Powers That Be," Wesley explained eagerly. "And we have one." He waved his hand at Cordelia. "But the connection is one-way, and she has no control over it. However, I have a spell—its name translates as 'The Eyes of the Seer'—that would allow her to call back, so to speak."

Most of the rest of the group just stared at him. Joyce spoke for them all when she said "Where did you get something like that, and what on Earth made you think that you'd ever need such a thing?"

"Nothing did," Giles interrupted eagerly. "Sometimes sorcerers can be like bloody kids collecting football cards: they'll probably never have any actual use for it, but they want it because it's cool."

"I'll have to look it up," Wesley said. "I don't remember the ritual off the top of my head. But I do remember that it starts at dawn—"

"When the gods' light returns to the Earth, revealing what was hidden in the dark," Giles agreed eagerly.

"Whoa!" Cordelia interrupted, waving her hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Vision Girl should have some input into this, don't you think?"

The two grinning wizards immediately sobered. "Of course, Cordelia," Giles said.

"I hate to take your new toy away," She continued. "Actually, no, I don't. Is this necessary? I mean _really_ necessary? You can't find a way to fight these things in one of your old books, or on some web site that only Willow or Oz can find for us?"

Willow answered before either ex-Watcher could. "There _really_ isn't," she said, shaking her head. "We got lucky with the Mayor—if he hadn't tried to cover it up, we never would have made the connection with the volcano. None of the few books that mentioned Olvikan said anything about volcanoes."

Faith swallowed hard, and she suddenly felt her eyes begin to sting. Lester. Poor Lester. She'd almost been able to forget—for a while. He was her one true innocent kill: Deputy Mayor Finch had been an accident (and now, she knew for a fact that he'd been dirty), and the courier was in league with demons. But Lester was just an archaeologist, and it turned out that killing him had been not only pointless, but counter-productive.

Cordelia sighed. "All right, all right. Dawn it is."

Wesley rose to his feet. "We'd best start researching and gathering supplies, then."

Gunn also rose, and started for the door. "I'll head home and rally the troops."

Faith sprang up and started after him. "Mind if I tag along?"

Angel started toward door to the basement. The sun hadn't quite set yet, and he needed to take the sewer route. "I'll go to Caritas and talk to Lorne, see what he can muster for us."

"I'll come with," Buffy offered.

"Wait!" Willow called as the group started to split up in a dozen different directions.

Everyone obeyed, stopping and turning back to hear what she had to say.

"Do you think you can make it back here before midnight?" she asked. "We've found a spell to treat Oz, but it requires that the whole 'tribe' be present."

It was a sign of just how bizarre the past few days had been, even by Scooby Gang standards, that they all just checked their watches, said "Okay," and continued on their way.

**Rallying the Troops**

Angel strode through the entrance of Caritas, walking so fast that—with his longer legs—Buffy was nearly forced to run to keep up.

Caritas was not yet very crowded, and Lorne was leaning on the bar with a drink in his hand, watching something that looked like a minotaur, except that the 'bull' parts of its body came from an American bison, bellowing that it was too sexy for its shirt.

"Well, hey," he greeted them. "Glad to see you. How did that rescue mission go last night?"

"Not good," Angel answered.

Lorne nodded sadly. "I'm sorry to hear that, but I can't say that I'm surprised. Are you here for some more help?" He grinned at Buffy. "Is our little ingenue here ready to sing?"

"We need help, but it's not the kind you sing for," Buffy said.

"Oh? What can I do for you, then?" He asked.

"LA has become Poland, and you're about to get blitzkrieged," She said. "We've already spotted the Nazis on the border."

"Beg pardon?" Lorne asked.

"You _did_ pay attention in history class," Angel said, impressed.

Buffy shrugged modestly. "It was a good day. Patrol had been easy the night before, so I slept well, and I was more awake than usual in class."

"But what did she _say_?" Lorne asked. His specialty was obscure musical references, not Earth history.

"The Scourge are in LA," Angel clarified. "Angelus is using them for an army." Lorne gasped, but Angel continued on relentlessly. "He's planning to destroy the world. Last time he tried, it almost worked, and he was a lot less powerful then than he is now. They may even know that, but they hate humanity so much that they don't care. They'll destroy the world and themselves, as long as every drop of human 'taint' is destroyed, too."

Then Lorne's face did something that Angel had never seen it do: it hardened. Angel realized that, for the first time since he had met Lorne, the singing demon was furious.

Without a word, Lorne turned, stalked up to the stage, turned off the music and took the microphone from the minotaur. "Sorry, Mowl," he said. "Something's come up. You can stop worrying—your cow's being one hundred percent faithful to you. In fact, congratulations—you have a calf on the way." With that, he hustled Mowl off the stage and turned to the audience. "Ladies, gentlemen, and others," he announced. "I regret to inform you that Caritas will be closed for the next few days, but an emergency has arisen." Disgruntled murmurs rose from the crowd, but Lorne silenced them with his next statement: "The Scourge has entered LA." The murmurs turned to gasps of horror. "Those of you who aren't very good fighters, I recommend you return to your homes and lock up. Better yet, take a vacation for a few days. In Vegas or Hawaii. Those of you who _are_ good at busting heads—" He pointed at the floor. "Spread the word: The resistance meets _here_."

Then there were cheers—a sound familiar to Caritas, but they weren't usually this angry.

--

Obeying a summoning wave, Buffy and Angel followed Lorne into his private apartment behind the bar.

"Some of us like this world," Lorne was saying as he unlocked a trunk at the foot of his bed. "She's been good to me, and I'm not about to let a bunch stupid, racist philistines hurt her." He reached in and pulled out a sword. Its hilt was finely tooled, though neither Angel nor Buffy recognized the symbols engraved into it. Its scabbard was some sort of green leather. "A souvenir from my homeworld," Lorne explained. "I was hoping I'd never have to use it." He drew the sword, and the blade was some kind of black metal.

"Give us a day to gather the troops," Lorne said. "Then call us whenever you find these bastards. We'll be ready."

**Running With the Wolf**

Once again, the furniture had been pushed to the walls of the Hyperion's lobby, and a pentacle had been chalked on the floor. Angel was seriously considering just painting one on permanently. But that wouldn't work. There tended to be differences for each spell and ritual. This one, for example, had required certain extra symbols beyond the pentacle, chalked hand prints, and other marks that looked like claw-gouges. Besides, if a line got scraped away while the furniture was being moved, that would be a Bad Thing.

Faith and Gunn had been the last to return to the Hyperion, bearing the good news that "They'll be there." That had been 11:30. Everyone else had been almost done preparing. It was fortunate that their preparations were simple, and even so, it was a near thing.

Spike, refusing to "play" had returned to his room with a fifth of bourbon.

Angel, Buffy, Riley, Faith, and Gunn stood at the outer points of the star. They were the 'tribe's' warriors, and it was their duty to protect the sanctity of the circle—and the other participants, if something went wrong. Each wore war-paint and carried their favored weapon: Angel and Gunn carried axes, Faith her knife, Buffy a simple stake, and Riley a tranquilizer gun. He would actually have preferred his M-16, but this was good enough for symbolic purposes, and it was better for the situation. A crack shot with a tranquilizer gun could prove very valuable if an emergency arose.

Wesley, Giles, Anya, Joyce, and Cordelia stood on the inner five points. Joyce and Giles were the tribal elders (a position Joyce didn't particularly appreciate), so they wore the closest things to crowns available. Joyce sported Cordelia's old May Queen tiara, while Giles (spared a Burger King crown by the fact that a foolish appearance on the part of the Elders might disrupt the spell) wore a simple metal band that Angel had fished out of his 'souvenir chest'. Wesley, as and elder-in-training, wore a simple cloth headband. Cordelia had a crescent moon painted on her forehead, symbolizing her role as a Seer, while Anya wore the shawl of the Wise Woman ("She knows all about magic and demons and stuff—it works, doesn't it?").

Xander had been deemed the tribe's Trickster, and now had half his face and one hand painted many bright colors. He moved freely between the outer and the inner circle and, indeed, was not to stop moving at any point during the ceremony.

Tara, Oz, and Willow stood in the center of the circle. The two women wore white robes, while Oz wore only his pants. Wolf-paws had been painted on his hands and feet, and a symbolic wolf-mask had been painted on his face.

The grandfather clock in Angel's office struck twelve.

"It is time," Tara intoned.

"Midnight, the time of change," Willow said.

"We bring before the tribe one with two spirits: Man and Beast," Tara said. "What must be done?"

"Make him whole," the outer circle pronounced. Angel, whose education had taken place in an era when "passing a test" meant being able to recite one's lessons back by rote, was best at remembering lines like this. Everyone followed his lead.

"Make him One," the inner circle added.

"Let the Two-Souled One speak," Xander said, making sure to keep walking as he read from his note card. "What does _he_ choose?"

"I would be One," Oz replied. "I would be whole."

"Beware," Willow said. "For the One you will become is not the One you once were, and what is done cannot be undone."

"So it is with all things:" Oz replied. "A choice made cannot be unmade, and often there is no choice at all. I choose now: let me be One."

"He has chosen to be One!" The witches declared.

"Into the forge-fire then, to be made into One," Xander declared. "And to see how many pieces he breaks into before the forging's done."

"Do you accept the strength of the Beast?" The outer circle demanded, holding up their weapons.

"I accept," Oz declared.

"Do you accept the wisdom of the Man?" The inner circle asked.

"I accept."

"Do you accept the guile of the Man?" The inner circle cautioned.

"I accept."

"Do you accept the rage of the Beast?"

Oz swallowed hard. The rage of the Beast was actually what he was trying to get away from. It was what he'd been fighting since the day Jordy bit him. Still, if the Beast's rage was brought to the surface, where he could feel it and control it himself, that was better than how things currently stood. He took a deep breath: "I accept."

"Then let him drink!" Xander shouted. He dashed out of the circle—dropping his index card with a sigh of relief once he left its confines—and grabbed a wineglass that sat on an end table just outside the circle. He rushed the glass back to the center of the circle and handed it to Oz. "Let him drink the blood of the Beast!"

"We call upon Cernunnos, the Stag King, Lord of the Hunt," Tara invoked.

"We call upon Luna, Mother of all who Change," Willow added.

The chanting faded into the background as Oz raised the wine glass to his lips. It was filled with red wine and "special ingredients" that Willow had refused to elaborate on. Last chance. This wasn't safe.

But it was worth anything to be able to choose who he was dangerous to.

He drank. And the world went away.

--

Oz's eyes faded into the distance and the wineglass dropped from his nerveless fingers, shattering on the floor.

Angel suddenly manifested his demon face and roared, striking the butt of his axe on the floor. Then he began to beat it on the floor in the rhythm of a heartbeat.

"Angel!" Buffy shout-whispered. "What are you—"

_Keep doing that!_ Willow's voice shouted in their minds._ The rest of the Warriors—join him! I don't know why, but it's helping!_

The other four Warriors shouted, and Gunn began to pound the butt of his axe on the ground, while the other three stomped.

_Thump, thump. Thump, thump._

Then they felt what Angel felt: they felt the Beast moving in their own blood, and they shouted again.

--

The full moon shone down on the night forest that Oz walked through. Massive, grasping things that might have been trees in the daylight loomed on either side of the trail, and the occasional rotted log appeared like swells in the ocean. He couldn't see very well, but that didn't matter. This place was as familiar as any bedroom he'd ever had. Sticks and dead leaves crackled under his feet as he walked, but that didn't matter either. He wasn't trying to hide his approach.

He didn't have to walk far. It was only a minute or two before he entered the clearing where the Wolf was waiting.

Funny. After all this time, he'd expected it to be some sort of hellhound, the size of a VW Beetle, with glowing red eyes and flaming foam dripping from its mouth. But it was just a wolf.

It began to snarl and bristle the moment he stepped into the clearing. He stopped walking, but he refused to lower his eyes or look aside. That would be submission. That wasn't what he was here for. "Do you know who I am?" He asked.

The Wolf snarled, but he was able to hear its answer in his head: _The Man._

"Then you know why I'm here."

_To eat me._

Oz shrugged. "Close enough."

The Wolf crouched back on its haunches, ready to spring.

_Kill you first._

Oz crouched, too, his feet spread and his arms out in a wrestler's stance.

"That's one possibility," He growled.

The Wolf lunged, launching itself for his throat. In the physical world, it would have knocked him down, maybe killed him before he had any chance to fight back. In the physical world, it would have been faster, stronger. This wasn't the physical world. They were inside his spirit. Here, the Man's arms were as strong as the Wolf's jaws.

For a moment, Oz struggled just to keep the Wolf's teeth away from his throat. Slowly, he gained the advantage, wrapping one arm around the Wolf's neck and forcing the other up under its chin.

_I could kill it!_ He thought, wild exultation whipping through him. _I could break its neck and then I could be me again! No bonding, just free!_

The Wolf snarled wildly and raked at him with its claws.

_No! Won't let you abandon the Mate again!_

"You're the reason I had to abandon her," Oz snarled. "You tried to kill her!"

_Confused! Blood-frenzied! You hurt her more._

Rage surged in Oz's shoulders and arms and he wanted—oh, how he wanted—to kill it. Instead, he flung it across the clearing. He was acting like it—like the Beast. Responding to everything with violence. Was he here to become it? That wasn't the kind of bonding he wanted.

Time to act like the Man. There were things that the Beast could never do: compromise. Share. Understand. The last was the key, the Man's highest strength and advantage. The Beast could never understand anything but its own narrow perspective. But if he could understand the Beast…

"Made you just about crazy, didn't it?"

_What?_

"Being trapped inside me except when the Moon was full. When the Mother's call was the strongest. Unable to run, unable to hunt. Then, when you do come out, it's to a place where the Earth itself is rotten, and everything is a threat."

The Wolf was calming. It stopped snarling and allowed its hackles to settle.

"Then when you do get out, we have you chained up and trapped in a cage. It must have been terrifying. If any of the Bad Things came, you wouldn't have been able to defend yourself."

_It was._

The Wolf sat down.

"Then…Veruca…happened."

The Wolf whimpered and tucked its tail.

"And I tried to lock you up forever." He took a deep breath. Was there any actual air to breathe in a place like this? "No wonder you went just about rabid. Look, I'll make a deal with you:"

The Wolf's ears perked up.

"I'll let you out to run. But you have to run with me."

--

Oz's eyes fluttered open.

He'd never left his feet. He'd just stood, rigid and blind, through his entire vision. How long had it been. Seconds? Hours? He had no idea.

The Mate and the Mate's Mate (how was such a thing possible? The Man understood perfectly, but the Wolf was confused) closed in tight around him. "Oz? Are you okay?" The Mate/Willow asked.

"It worked," he answered, the words making strange shapes out of his tongue. Apparently, the part of him that was wolf needed practice talking.

Willow threw her arms around his neck with a squeal of joy, while Tara let out a long-held puff of breath. "Praise Luna," she said.

Oz nodded his agreement. Then something occurred to him, and he held Willow out away from him. "Question," he said. "If I had killed the Wolf while I was inside, what would have happened?"

"You would have died," she answered. "You might not have been fully bonded, but the Wolf was already enough of a part of you so you couldn't survive without it."

"Huh. Why wasn't I told that was a risk?"

"We didn't know it was," Willow answered. "The people who never came back from the trance never got a chance to say why, so we didn't know you killing the Wolf was a possibility."

"Huh."

"So now what happens?" Tara asked softly.

"What do you mean?" Willow asked.

Tara nodded at the two of them, where they stood embracing. "You have him back. He can choose who he's dangerous to, now. We're in the same place as Buffy, Angel, and Riley. Who do you choose, Willow?"

Willow released Oz and turned to the other witch. "What are you saying, honey? You know I love you."

"And you never stopped loving him," Tara said. "Just like Buffy. So now what happens?"

Willow's mouth worked helplessly, utterly lost.

"Um, if I can say something before the angst really gets rolling?" Oz interjected, holding up his hand.

The two witches turned to look at him.

"I know I'm just one out of three, here, but if it's my call, neither of us leaves."

"I don't understand," Willow said, her voice just as lost as her expression. She'd been here before. Twice. It wasn't a place she'd wanted to come back to.

"Yesterday morning, when you submitted to me," Oz said to Tara. "I 'accepted' you. There's no other word for it. As far as the Wolf—I—am concerned, we're a pack now. I need you almost as much as I need Willow. Though not quite in the same way, of course."

The two witches were staring at him incredulously now. So was the rest of the circle, but right now, the rest of the world didn't exist.

"I like you," he continued, to Tara. "What's more, I need you. A packmate is more than family. A packmate is part of yourself. Do you like me?"

Struck dumb, Tara nodded silently.

"So you like me, I like you, and we both love Willow. We either have a really big problem here, or an interesting solution." He held out both of his hands "What do you say?"

Slowly, tentatively Tara took his left hand, and held out her other to Willow.

Willow had gone beyond confused to genuinely frightened. But as she saw both of her lovers holding out their hands to her, hope blossomed within the confusion and fear. Taking a deep breath, as she once did before plunging into water that she knew was cold. She reached out and took their hands before she could talk herself out of it. It wasn't the smart or the sensible thing to do, she knew. But it was the right one.

They stood there for a moment, holding each other's hands and smiling into each other's faces before Willow took both of them into her arms and hugged them close.

The rest of the circle couldn't help but stare. Faith summed up the general opinion when she said "I guess I'm happy for them. But, dude! This is fucked up."


	3. Day 3

**Just Before Dawn**

"You're not serious."

"I'm sorry, Cordelia, but I am," Wesley apologized. "It says right here:" He pointed at the book he held in his hands. " 'The Seer shall be presented to the Gods as the Gods presented the Seer to the world.' It's fairly clear that means that you must be…unclothed for the ceremony."

"I was covered in blood when I was born, too," she countered hotly. "Are we gonna dump Angel's breakfast on me? Oh—and how about the placenta, huh?"

"Uh—a few symbolic markings in red body paints will do for the blood. It _would_ be useful if you had your placenta, but it's not necessary. That's part of the reason some indigenous peoples save it. It's a connection with the pre-living world--"

She waved her hands and cut him off. "Fine, great. I don't want to hear any more about it. Are you sure there's no mistake in the translation?" She demanded.

He shook his head. "It's just classical Latin, Cordelia. I read it almost as easily as I do English. But just to be sure, I checked with Mr. Giles and Angel."

Cordelia turned to seek out the men in question and confirm that statement for herself. They were close at hand: they were both down on the floor. Angel was sponging the old chalk lines off the floor, while Giles drew new ones. Both had apparently been listening, so they spoke up as soon as she turned to them.

"It's true, Cordy." Angel said.

"Yes. It's—um—really quite clear," Giles confirmed.

Cordelia glared at them, and prepared to accuse them of making it all up. Hey, this was _naked_ here.

But just then, Joyce arrived, carrying several large white candles. "They even checked it with me," she supplied. "And I just took a year or two of Latin in High School. When I told them that I didn't have my old dictionary with me, they asked Anya, and _she_ confirmed it."

A nightmarish--and no doubt accurate--image of Anya spreading the word among the Scoobies who had been sent upstairs to "get some rest—and keep resting until we tell you it's okay" flashed into Cordelia's mind. She buried her face in her hands, then threw her hands up in defeat. "All right! Fine! Whatever! We're doing something that could fry my brains out, so what does it really matter what I'm wearing? Or not wearing!"

"That's the spirit," Giles said, sarcastic but not particularly mean.

"So who's going to be there?" She demanded.

Wesley flipped to the appropriate page in his book and scanned it, then pointed to the pertinent line, though she couldn't read it. "It says here that the Rite shall be performed by the Priests and the Priestesses—"

Giles stretched and rubbed his back. "That's the ideal situation. What we _have_ are two sorcerers and two witches. It'll have to do."

Wesley waved the concern away without looking up from the page. "And it shall be witnessed by the Champions of the people—"

"I still think Faith should be standing in the middle," Angel said to Giles, finishing the last of the old chalk lines. "I'm the Warrior of Night, Buffy's the Warrior of Day, and Faith is Twilight. We should be right in a row."

"Yes, but then we have an imbalance of male and female forces. There are going to be far more women present than men as it is. That could create problems if we don't place everyone just right."

"—And also by the Seer's parents," Wesley finished.

"See, right there, we have a problem," Cordelia said.

Wesley didn't need to ask what. One of Cordelia's parents was in prison. The other was living in a studio apartment in Sunnydale. Neither was present.

"Not necessarily," Giles said, rising to his feet. "This ritual was created in an era when it was entirely possible that both parents would be dead, so the Seer can appoint others to bear witness on the parents' behalf."

"You know," Wesley said, a step ahead for once, "It's allowed—even expected, really—that one or both of the seer's parents would be among the participating clergy."

"Gosh, I wonder who I'm going to pick," Cordelia said. "Just give Giles the Daddy-hat and tell Joyce where to stand and let's get to this"

"Very well," Wesley said, closing the book.

"Nine people," Angel commented. "That's a good omen."

Wesley pointed to the foot of the stairs, where the two witches were waiting. "Willow and Tara will be your attendants. They'll help you prepare."

"Great," she groused. "The only two women around here who might be interested in handling me naked, and they're the ones in charge of it."

Wesley shrugged helplessly. "If the Seer were male, it would be up to Mr. Giles and myself, but—"

"But it's me. Yeah, yeah. Let's just do this."

Wesley heard her voice waver on the last word, and it suddenly occurred to him that she was embarking on a potentially fatal experience, and all she was doing was complaining about the details. Once, he would have mistaken that remarkable courage for shallowness, but he had learned better since then.

He wanted to reach out and do something comforting. Pat her on the back, perhaps, or even hug her. But he was too slow. She had already turned and gone.

"I mean who am I going to pick for my parents? Really? Spike and Anya? I'd almost rather that Giles and Joyce _were_ my parents. I can certainly count on them better."

Cordelia's rant was loud enough for the whole room to hear, and it drew an "Amen" from Willow and absurd, proud smiles from the 'parents' in question.

--

The first step was a ritual bath. That meant it had to take place in Angel's apartment, as it had to be an actual _bath_, and all of the guestrooms only had shower stalls. It was short but it was scalding, and they insisted that they use Angel's unscented off-the-shelf bar soap and shampoo. Cordelia complained that now she would "smell like boy", but they held firm, saying that the fewer artificial substances tainting her skin—including the perfumes in the hygiene products she would have preferred—the better. After a moment or two of wrangling, she settled in and allowed Joyce to wash her hair, which was apparently the "Mother's" duty.

The bath was just starting to cool to a comfortable temperature when Joyce left and Cordelia had to get out of the bath. Willow and Tara dried her with Angel's towels, anointed her hair with some sort of oil—she wasn't too happy about that part, but they'd sworn it was a good conditioner—then began to apply the ritual paints. She didn't bother to ask why the oil and the paints were less "artificial" than her perfumes. They were probably organically based or something.

First, they applied symbols that were sacred Woman symbols: a red spiral over her womb leading into a downward-pointing arrow, symbolizing her fertility. She asked what symbol a man would have, and they answered a simple, straight arrow.

Next, she had two round, red moons painted on each breast, with a white drop on each nipple. She didn't need the symbolism of those explained.

She felt Willow's hand trembling as she started the moon on her left breast, and she realized that the purpose of giving her female attendants was at least partially defeated by the fact that these two happened to be lesbians. In that moment, she had a flash of insight. It was almost a vision, minus the skull-rupturing pain: She was maybe the third real person Willow had seen completely naked in her entire life. To the best of her knowledge, the formerly shy, nerdy Hacker had never been skinny-dipping or so much as peeked when Buffy was changing clothes.

Rather than embarrassment or annoyance, Cordelia felt the kind of amused compassion she might have felt for any other virgin or near-virgin—Wesley, perhaps—who approached her, trembling with fear and desire and most of all, awe at the simple fact that he was going to have contact with a naked human being.

She caught Willow's small, trembling hand, and held it for a moment, turning her head to look at the red-haired witch. Willow was looking at her own feet, her face flaming.

Cordelia squeezed her hand.

Willow looked up.

Cordelia nodded, and Willow sighed in relief and returned to work, her hands no longer trembling.

The Woman symbols complete, the two witches moved on to the symbols that signified Cordelia's status as a Seer: a flame-shaped blue mask around her eyes and a blue crescent moon on her forehead.

Finally, they added the paints that Wesley had mentioned, the ones that symbolized her birth-blood. These consisted of simple red streaks: one on each cheek, one on each shoulder, one on each flank, one on each hand and foot.

The preparations done, they each took her by the hand, and led her out into the lobby.

--

The preparations for this ritual had driven the point home to Angel that simply painting a circle on the floor would be a bad idea. This ritual--a sacred, priestly ceremony of High Ritual Magic--was entirely different from the more "mortal" magic they'd used in the past several days. The etchings were entirely different. First, as an appeal to the Powers, the spell required an invocation to "seven gods." It hadn't specified which seven, so they had made a ring of seven modern holy symbols on the floor: a cross, a Star of David, a Crescent-and-Star, a pentacle, an Om symbol, a yin/yang symbol, and a simple Buddhist mandala. They had done this in the hopes that "living" symbols, invested with the belief of the faithful, would be more powerful and effective than the symbols of forgotten gods and dead religions.

The three Warriors each stood on a holy symbol—Buffy on the Cross, Angel on the Star of David, Faith on the Crescent-and-Star. As prescribed by the ritual, each of them wore the closest thing they had to armor. For them, that meant leather pants and leather jackets all around. Each of them also carried a sword, instead of their usual weapon of choice. Angel had a massive broadsword, Buffy a simple long sword, and Faith had borrowed Cordelia's Katana (which had, of course, been borrowed from Angel in turn). Wesley and Giles, dressed in togas made from scavenged bed sheets, waited in the center of the circle with a brazier and a wineglass.

Angel could feel his skin itch. Giles had purified the ceremonial space with a short ritual of salt and water and chimes. Apparently his soul made him pure enough to remain, but he was still enough of an "unclean thing" that the ritual made him uncomfortable.

Then the door to Angel's apartment opened, and Tara and Willow led Cordelia out into the lobby. Joyce, who'd been waiting outside the door in a makeshift toga of her own ("I haven't done this since college!" "Mom? _What_ did you do in college?" "Nothing."), took one of Cordelia's hands from Tara, wrapped her other arm around the girl's shoulders, and led her down into the circle with the two witches following in procession behind.

Wesley picked up the book, which already lay open to the pertinent section. "Who brings this woman before the gods?" He asked as the procession entered the circle.

"Her mother and I," Giles answered. "The gods gave her to us, and now we offer her back up to them."

"So let it be," Wesley pronounced.

Everyone took position: Cordelia standing before the brazier and the wineglass, with Joyce on the other side of it, and the "priests" and "priestesses' on either side of her. Once everyone was in place, they glanced surreptitiously at Angel. After nearly 250 years, he had learned to sense the moment of the Sun's rising.

He held up a hand for them to wait…wait…

An unpleasant, prickling heat flashed across his skin.

His hand snapped down to point at Giles.

Giles raised a chime and struck it. "The Sun rises, and the gods' revealing light is once more upon the world."

"We call upon Apollo, god of inspiration and dreams and prophecy," Wesley said.

"We call upon Gabriel, messenger of Yahweh," Willow added.

"We call upon the Kachinas, messengers of the Great Spirit," Tara finished.

"All messengers of the gods who can hear us, we call," Giles proclaimed. "This seer is your lighthouse before us. Without her, we die on the rocks. Without her, our Champions are blind."

"But our guide is in darkness" Willow said. "We beseech you to show her the way."

Tara, who had been holding the wineglass since the ceremony began, handed it to Cordelia. "Let this drink set her feet on the path," she said.

Wesley leaned forward and lit the bay leaves in the brazier. "Let this smoke guide her to your realms, as it once guided the oracle at Delphi."

Now it was Cordelia's turn to do something: she had to drink. She raised the glass to her lips. As another such glass had done for Oz the night before, this glass contained red wine and a mixture of things that Cordelia didn't really want to ask about.

She hesitated even less than Oz had. Maybe this was dangerous, but getting her mind flash-fried by a vision of the gods had to be better than anything Angelus had in mind. She drained the glass in one long swallow, and the world went dark.

--

If there was a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it, then Cordelia missed it. Maybe she went through it really fast.

Instead, she found herself on what looked to be the richest street she had ever seen. Each house was actually a mansion, grand and ornate, with a long, gated driveway. None of the gates were closed, though, nor did they have anything that looked like locks.

It was night—the sky above was clear and starry—but the street was well lit. Not just by streetlights, but by lights from the mansions. There was a party going on at each mansion, but the biggest party, with the brightest lights and the loudest music, was going on at the biggest mansion.

Somehow, she knew that that was _her_ mansion, and that the party wasn't one of her parents' cocktail parties for making connections, it was for _her_. A birthday party? No. A welcome-home party.

Great, but she was hardly dressed for—

It was then that she realized she wasn't naked anymore.

She was dressed in a simple but elegant burgundy cocktail dress, floor-length but slit to the hip. She also wore a diamond necklace, simple but clearly the finest piece of jewelry she'd ever seen, let alone owned.

"Ohmygod," she giggled joyfully, looking down at herself. "Is this _Heaven_?"

"It's yours," a soft voice, like a whisper of breeze, answered. "Many people create something very similar for themselves before they're able to leave such mortal things behind and see this place as it truly is."

Cordelia whipped around, searching the empty street for the speaker. "Who's there?" She demanded. "Where are you?"

"I am the messenger you called for," the voice answered.

"Show yourself!" She challenged. Then she remembered where she was, and realized that such belligerence might not be a good idea. "Uh, sorry about that," she apologized. "It's just that I, uh, hang out with your, uh, Champions a lot, and usually it's bad news if we can't see something."

"I understand," the voice answered. "But I can't show you a face here. We'll have to go to a neutral Heaven."

Cordelia looked longingly over her shoulder at her mansion, her party. There were hot guys—was Doyle one of them?—waiting in the hot tub, and a new Queen C waiting in the driveway for her.

She sighed and fixed her gaze straight ahead. She had work to do. "All right, let's go," she said.

The next moment, she found herself standing in the middle of an endless plain of fluffy white clouds. The night sky still hung above her, the stars sparkling down. Funny, she'd expected Heaven to be sunnier.

"Okay," she called. "I'm here. Can I see you now?"

"I am here, Cordelia," The voice came, but this time it was not just a voice but a Voice. It filled the world, and it filled Cordelia's senses. It was as warm and soft as summer sand at the beach, it smelled and tasted like the breakfast that Joyce and Angel had served—the first meal that the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations had eaten as a family. To her ears, it was a beautiful and musical voice, but it was somehow all genders and none, as if a choir was singing each word in absolutely perfect unison.

"I know," she said, more humbly than anyone back in the physical world would have believed. "But I'd still like to see you, if that's okay."

"Very well. Look up."

She obeyed—and dropped to her knees in awe and terror as the sky started to open.

Two lines of light—miles long and miles apart—shot across the star-spattered sky. Then, slowly, they started to widen, revealing a world of swirling, blazing, rainbow color beyond.

Was the owner of the Voice going to emerge from one of those openings, accompanied by a Heavenly Host or choir or whatever from the other?

Suddenly, in another flash of insight—perhaps there was an actual upside to being a Seer after all?—Cordelia realized something that curled her into a ball, pressing her hands tight to her eyes.

The owner of the Voice was not going to emerge from those holes in the sky. Those holes were…

The owner of the Voice was opening its eyes.

"I will condense my substance, so it will be easier for us to speak," the Voice said.

Although she hadn't been cold before—far from it—Cordelia was relieved at the sudden feeling of sun-warmth on her back.

Slowly, cautiously, she came out of her tuck. Her head was only raised for a moment, before she brought it back down again. Groveling was all she could do—all she could _imagine_ doing.

The Speaker was huge. Impossibly, unbelievably huge. It towered hundreds of feet into the sky. It was shaped like Belial had been—humanoid, with a halo made of stars, glass-pane wings, and eyes like blazing rainbows. But looking at the Speaker was like looking at the night sky: body, wings, and hair were all a clear midnight black, with stars glittering and dancing in them. In the brief moment that Cordelia was watching, a comet shot across the Speaker's chest, and the spiral-arm of a galaxy swirled through one of its wings.

"Rise, daughter of Gaia," the Voice said. "Don't you know that you and your kind are the Children of—" The next phrase he spoke came to her "ears" as "the Powers", but she somehow knew that whatever she "heard" was a crude translation of this being's true language. Somehow, whatever word it had just spoken to her was both singular and plural, and her mind had just heard the closest thing it could comprehend. "—not servants? It is unseemly for the children to bow and kneel and grovel. Stand up!"

"I can't," she moaned. "I can't! You're too—too—you…you're…"

"Ah. I apologize. I shall take a form that you may be more comfortable with."

She felt the world shift around her as the Speaker did so. Her senses reeled as Heaven realigned itself to allow for her mortal fragility. She was awed, humbled, and honored at the same time: why would such a being change itself to suit _her_ needs, unless—

"There now, that should be better." The Voice had become a mere voice, and it was definitely masculine now. Masculine, with a British accent. What was more, it was a vaguely _familiar_ masculine, British voice.

Not quite believing her ears, Cordelia looked up, and saw Alan Rickman, as he'd appeared in the movie _Dogma_, standing before her.

"_Is_ this better?" The Speaker asked.

"Uh, yes. Thank you," Cordelia answered blankly.

"Good." He reached down to her. "Please. Stand up." Still staring blankly, she allowed him to help her to her feet.

"You saw _Dogma_?" was the first question that blurted out.

He nodded. "It was actually pretty popular around here. It was hilarious, of course, and Kevin Smith really did his homework. I especially liked the way they portrayed me." He patted his chest.

"You?" Cordelia asked incredulously. "You mean you really are that Metric guy?"

"The Metatron," The Speaker corrected. "That's right. I'm the voice of the Powers." Once again, Cordelia heard "Powers," but knew that the Metatron had spoken that odd, mind-bending singular-plural word. "For the very reason that was mentioned in the movie: if you saw the true face of the Powers, your eyes would be burned blind. If you heard their true voice, your mind would collapse and your heart would burst in your chest. Now: what can I do for you?"

--

In the physical world, Cordelia—who had been standing for the past several minutes with her head bowed—suddenly looked up. The other participants, who'd been watching and waiting for something like this, were startled nonetheless.

"Cordelia?" Willow asked. "Are you okay? What did they say?"

Cordelia looked toward her, but it was instantly and abundantly clear that Cordelia wasn't there. There was none of Cordelia's essential humanity in the face that was turned in her direction. Something unimaginably old and huge and powerful and terribly, terrifyingly Good was there instead.

Cordelia turned away again, her Seer marks starting to glow a soft blue, and her eyes turning into pools of blazing color, filling the whole room with light. She clasped her hands between her breasts, over her heart. Then she held them out: cupped in her hands was a seed, roughly the size of a peach pit, but smooth and silver. Perhaps such seeds existed somewhere in the mortal universe, but none like it had ever been seen on Earth.

Cordelia's mouth opened and a Voice emerged, but it had no relation to hers or, in fact, to anything human. It sounded like an entire choir was singing each word in perfect unison. "Take this seed," the Voice said. "Take this seed, and let the Lifeweavers make of it a tree, watering it with holiness as it grows. Then let a Warrior take the knife that was the salvation of the world, though it was bought in evil and quenched in blood, and cut a staff from this tree. Let the Builders carve it with holiness, seal the words with metal that is precious beyond all price, then quench it with holiness. So shall you make the spear that must pierce the Heart of the Darkness."

That said, Cordelia just stood there, silent and waiting, holding out the seed. Slowly, tentatively, Willow reached out and took it. She was just starting to ease back and away when Cordelia's hand snapped around and caught her by the wrist, eliciting a screech of surprise.

"But beware," The Voice said. "Should the Darkness break its bonds, the shadows shall drip with blood. And the merest touch of blood or shadow shall fill you with the Darkness's own hunger."

With that, the light left Cordelia's eyes and her hands dropped to her sides, but her Seer marks continued to glow softly.

--

The Metatron stood silent, its now-human eyes distant as the focus of its consciousness was on Earth, delivering its message. Nonetheless, Cordelia could hear the words that her mouth was speaking. That was good—it was a sign that she wasn't dead, if she still had a connection with her body.

"Carve it with holiness?" She muttered to herself. "Precious beyond all price? What does that _mean_? If these guys are so omnipotent, why can't they give a straight answer?"

"Actually, we can," The Metatron answered, its eyes returning to alertness.

Cordelia's blood—if she had any here—ran cold. Suddenly, she realized that her customary grousing about the Powers might not be entirely wise in Heaven. "Oh. G—I mean, oh, jeez. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"No, it's all right," the Metatron said. "I can give you a straight answer on this, and I believe you're entitled to it."

Entitled? What happened to "we are the gods, do what we say"? Or maybe she'd had the wrong impression of them all along. After all, Metatron had been nothing but nice so far…

"The Powers can't give straight answers, especially on the questions that you and your friends bring them, because that could be considered direct intervention, and that would be against the Rules."

"Rules?" Cordelia asked incredulously. "What 'Rules'? Aren't the Powers the ones who _make_ the Rules?"

"Only partially," the Metatron answered. "They agreed on the Rules with the Lower Beings—the Deep Lords of Misrule. They would compete for the world's destiny through proxies—the Lower Being's slaves and loyal champions like yourselves—rather than fight it out directly. Both sides are forbidden to intervene directly, but if one does, the penalty is that the other side is allowed to do so as well, to restore the balance."

"You make it sound like a game," Cordelia said, her anger overcoming her awe for good this time. "Is that what it's all about? Our lives—everything we've suffered through—it's just a _game_ to you?"

"The alternative is even worse," The Metatron answered.

"What, the Powers fighting their own battles?" She demanded. "Would that be so awful?"

"If the Powers and the Deep Lords turned to open war, it would be chaos," the Metatron said. "The Walls would fall. The Wheel of Time would break off its axle. The Powers would win, but your world couldn't possibly survive. We take the chance of your world being destroyed, rather than take actions which would ensure it."

"Oh." Suddenly, a lot of things made a lot more sense.

"Instead, they give your people the means to save themselves. The plan works because the Lower Beings want to rule the world, not destroy it—mostly. They even follow the rules, most of the time. Unless they see a vulnerable point, a chance for a knockout punch. As the First Evil did the Christmas that it tried to drive Angel to suicide."

"He told me about that," she said. "So the snow--?"

"A bright miracle to counter the dark one."

"Wait a second," she said. "Don't you have one of those coming now? I mean, if Belial showing up in the world and pulling Angelus out of Angel so he's an Old One now doesn't count as a dark miracle, what does?"

"Very true," the Metatron agreed with a strangely proud smile. He looked like a teacher whose student has just made a sudden leap of comprehension on a difficult concept. "And now, Cordelia Chase, I must bid you farewell."

"Farewell?" She cried as Heaven started to fade around her. "Wait! I still have questions! Are you going to—"

"Tell Giles and Wesley to check the Elysian prophecies," he called after her. Then he was gone.

--

Cordelia's eyes fluttered open in the physical world.

"Cordelia?" Wesley asked. "Is it you, this time?"

"Angel, Wesley, you're not gonna believe this," she said. "But I just got a straight answer from the Powers that Be."

**Forging the Weapon**

The other members of the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations had been told that it was now safe to stop resting, and they had hurried downstairs, eager for an explanation of the hotel-shaking music.

Well, most of them hurried. Xander had responded to the knock at his locked door by calling, in an out-of-breath and strained voice, that he and Anya would be down in a few minutes.

"We must not have heard them over all the bloody singing," Spike commented.

"Funny," Willow said. "I thought she squealed loud enough to be heard over _anything_."

--

Cordelia sat on one of the couches, wrapped in Angel's bathrobe. It was black, of course, and of course she was nearly lost in it. She may not be as small as Buffy, but Angel still had her by nearly eight inches in height and his shoulders were about twice as broad as hers.

The crackly dryness of the paint was starting to irritate her skin, and she picked absently at her Seer mask and the other marks on her face. She couldn't wait for this little interview to be over so she could get a shower.

She was already forgetting what Heaven had been like, and the Metatron's greater form (let alone whatever awesome Trueform had been hidden behind Heaven's night sky) was fading into a vague memory of immensity. But she doubted that she would forget a single word that it had spoken to her. Ever.

Xander and Anya finally arrived a few minutes later, hurriedly adjusting their clothes. No point in trying to deny the obvious—they just did their best to delay the proceedings as little as possible.

At Giles' prompting, Cordelia related everything the Metatron had said, especially the prophecy.

Some of it was easy to figure out. "Well, that confirms it," Angel said when she got to the warning about the shadows dripping blood."

"Confirms what?" Wesley asked.

"Compare her warning to my vision, and it becomes pretty clear that Angelus is going to have the 'Aspect of the Demon' power when he reaches his true form."

"The Old Ones that vampires come from must have been creatures of disease," Giles said. "Modern vampires are only infected shadows of the real thing, many steps removed from the source. That's why it's so difficult for them to infect someone: they must drain a human to the point of death. Only then is the human's body vulnerable to the demonic infection in the vampire's blood. But now that Angelus is pure—"

"It becomes like poison ivy," Xander finished.

"Exactly," Giles agreed.

It was agreed that, if Angelus reached his true form (whatever that might be), the mortals would pull back and leave Angel, Spike, and Lorne's demon brigade to handle him. Better that than give Angelus an elite strike force of vampires with the combined powers of the Scooby Gang and a pack of Master vampires.

The Metatron's revelations as to why the Powers never seemed to get off their divine duffs and do anything were fascinating, but they could be discussed later. That left the central prophecy: the weapon.

"Okay," Riley said in what Buffy and Willow both recognized as his TA voice. "Let's break it down, take it one piece at a time. Who are the lifeweavers?"

"That would be Willow and Tara," Wesley answered promptly. "Or perhaps Mrs. Summers."

"That was easy," Oz commented.

"How are you so sure?" Buffy asked suspiciously. She hadn't been present to witness Wesley's bloom into competence, so she still couldn't quite trust it.

"Because—er, as politically incorrect as it might be to say—um, uh—Mr. Giles?"

"Because they're women," Giles answered. "Specifically, Willow and Tara are witches, and they served as the priestesses in the ritual. Joyce is the only woman present who's actually borne a child. It certainly can't hurt for all three to take part."

"That's how we know who the Builders are, too," Wesley continued. "According to the same magical symbolism wherein women are the sources of life, men the makers and builders of artificial things. That leaves it to Mr. Giles and myself to perform the rituals on the spear. Though…" he looked embarrassed again. "If any of you gents are a bit better at wood carving…"

"I can do that," Angel said.

"Okay, then," Riley said in his patient-but-insistent, let's-move-this-along TA tone. "Next piece, probably another easy one: 'Water it with Holiness'?"

--

Willow, Tara, and Joyce planted the seed in the courtyard, and watered it with Holy Water. It grew with miraculous speed, reaching the size of a sturdy young tree in minutes. As they'd expected, it didn't look like any tree that had ever appeared on Earth. For one thing, its bark was silvery, and its leaves were shiny and golden.

Faith used the knife Mayor Wilkins had given her to cut an appropriately-sized branch off, but then it was up to the "Builders" to carve it into a spear.

Carving a spear can take time. Carving holy symbols and prayers into the spear—their best guess at the meaning of 'engrave it with holiness'—would take longer. Time they didn't have. They ended up using a spell to shape the branch into a spear ("Very popular among tribal shamans who wanted to be sure they never went unarmed.") and placing a craftsman's charm for speed and accuracy on Angel's tools. It would still take time, but with Angel's own speed included in the equation, it became a matter of hours, not days.

That left them with the one thing they hadn't figured out yet.

--

"A metal precious beyond all price?" Wesley repeated as he stared helplessly at the crucible they'd set up in the middle of the Holy Circle. "What could that possibly be? Gold, silver, platinum—everything has a price. Even if it's so high that no one could possibly pay it, there's still a price."

"There are elements that only exist in labs," Willow suggested. "Things that there are only a few grams of on Earth."

"Which means that their dollar value is in the billions," Giles said in frustration. "But if you counted the labor of the scientists, the materials and tools they used, and the rarity of the item, you could probably arrive at a price."

"Even it was something that didn't occur in our dimension, like the sword that Buffy and Angel described," Wesley said. "How would we get it? Cash? Barter? All of that establishes a price. Even if we stole it or if it was given as a gift, that doesn't mean that it had no price at home."

"And the Metatron said 'beyond _all_ price'," Cordelia said glumly.

"Damn," Faith said. "They don't leave any loopholes, do they?"

Wesley shook his head.

"I have it." Joyce said. But rather than a triumphant shout, it was just a sad sigh. She took off a necklace she was wearing and held it up: a plain gold ring hung from the chain. "This is my wedding band," she said. "I don't wear it on my hand anymore, because, well, I'm not married anymore. But I just can't get rid of it. It reminds me of the good times that I had with Hank. Buffy's birth." A sudden, fiendish grin bloomed on her face, though it was still sad around the edges. "Buffy's conception."

"Mom!" Buffy protested, her face flaming as most of the rest of the people in the room snickered.

Suddenly, Joyce stepped up to the crucible and released one of the ends of the chain, letting the ring slide off and into the crucible. "There," she said as she watched the gold start to soften and puddle. Her voice stayed steady, but tears welled up in her eyes and silently overflowed. "Now it's gone. Nothing can ever bring it back or replace it. I can buy another plain gold ring, of course. Easily. But it'll never be the ring that Hank Summers put on my finger twenty-five years ago."

They all looked at each other. She was right—she had to be. It was the only answer. None of them looked happy at the heart-rending sacrifice they would have to make.

Riley was the next to step up, pulling a set of dog tags out of the breast pocket of this shirt and a pocket knife out of his jeans. "Will that crucible melt something a little harder than gold?" He asked.

"Both the crucible and the flame are enchanted," Giles answered. "They'll melt anything you care to put into them."

Riley nodded and began to cut the hard, black rubber off the edges of the dog tags. "Forrest was my best friend," he said without preamble. "Not just in the Initiative, or in the army, or in college. We went to high school together—junior high—elementary school. We've been buddies as long as I can remember. Longer, really. His parents and mine were friends before we were born. No matter what happened, he was always there for me. Don't get me wrong, it's not like we followed each other around. We were across the country from each other for the first two years of college, before we joined the Initiative and were sent to Sunnydale. But even when we were that far apart, he was always there for me." He dropped the dog tags into the crucible. "Now he's gone."

There were other things he could have said: that Forrest had died because he, himself, had failed to be there for him. That he'd been too busy fighting Adam's control to even grieve at the time. That he'd been the one forced to burn Forrest's body—or rather, the cyber-demonoid that it had become.

But he said none of those things as he turned away from the last sliver of his best friend's life as it melted away.

One person in the group, however, already knew those things. He'd shared them with her during the long, dark nights. As he turned away from the crucible, Buffy caught him in a fierce hug. Riley returned the hug, and he sighed deeply, but his eyes stayed dry. He had no tears left for Forrest, or himself.

While they were doing that, Faith stepped up to the crucible and, without a word, snapped the blade off Mayor Wilkins' knife, and fed it to the flames. That done, she disappeared upstairs into the hotel, still silent.

They all followed in quick succession. Everyone had something to sacrifice to the flames. From the pewter angel pin that had belonged to Gunn's sister , to Tara's locket ("J-j-just l-let me g-g-g-get th-the pic-pic-picture of m-my m-m-mother ou-out."). Some said a few words about their sacrifice, others were silent. They would never know, for example, that Gunn had promised Alonna that as long as she was wearing the pin, he was watching over her—and that she hadn't been wearing it when she'd died. They would never know the significance of the novelty flattened penny that Oz flipped into the crucible, but considering the fact that he made an actual sad expression as he did so, it was just as precious to him as anyone else's was.

Buffy and Angel went last. There was no question what their sacrifice would be.

They came one after the other, not together. Angel went first, Buffy second. Each claddagh ring made a small, unimportant _plunk_ as it dropped into the silvery pool in the crucible, which was actually rather sizable by now.

Angel dropped his in quickly, before he could talk himself out of it. The words _Surely there's already enough in there_ were just starting to cross his mind as the ring dropped into the molten metal. Without a sound, he turned, stalked across the room, dropped down on a couch that was turned toward the wall as if all the strength had gone out of his legs, and buried his face in his hands.

Buffy paused for a moment, studying her ring before she threw it in. Hands for friendship. Crown for loyalty. Heart for love.

Cutting a chip out of his chest with a piece of broken glass to save her. That was love.

Giving up his chance at humanity to save her. That was love.

When did it all get so complicated?

"Forever, that's the whole point," she murmured, too softly for even Oz to hear as she dropped her ring in.

--

The impromptu ceremony over, the last remnants of the group scattered back to their rooms.

Giles and Wesley poured the metal into the symbols and prayers that Angel had carved. Then they quenched the spear in holy water, and it was done.

As they worked, Giles found himself pondering. He was half again as old as Wesley, the next-oldest magician among them, and he thought himself safe in believing he had seen and experienced far more than any of them.

But he had never witnessed any magic as deep or as true as what he had witnessed here today. He could feel the power humming in the spear every time he touched it. The power of fourteen people—two sevens—willing to give up everything precious to them to keep the rest of the world safe.

Magic as deep and true as the roots of the World Tree. Magic forged in blood and pain and love. The kind of magic that you use when making your stand against a reborn Old One on the ultimate, shining edge of the West.

_Yes. Here's where we make our stand, you murderous bastard. _

_And you're going to go down._

**On High School Musicals and Decisions Made**

"Those were your wedding rings, weren't they?"

"Huh?"

Riley had found Buffy on the roof, staring out at the morning-lit rooftops of LA. She wasn't the only one up there: he'd spotted Giles and Faith, and he suspected there might be others, but everyone seemed to be keeping to their own private section of roof.

"The rings you and Angel sacrificed," Riley repeated. "They were your wedding rings, weren't they?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but found she could only sigh, close it again, look back away across LA, and nod.

"What did you say?"

She looked back up at him sharply. "What?"

"You said something when you put it in. I saw your lips moving, but I couldn't hear it."

"Nothing," she answered. "It was nothing. Nothing important, anyway." She couldn't tell him. It would be needlessly cruel, and besides…

He wrapped his arm around her and rested his chin on the top of her head, looking out at the same vista she was. It made him a little claustrophobic. He'd grown up on a road where cars came by maybe three times a day, and gone to school in a town that was maybe a mile or two in each direction, and not one building was more than three stories tall. His time in Sunnydale had made him more accustomed to more crowded living conditions, but this endless landscape of artificial mountains was still overwhelming. The cacophony of traffic and the scum of garbage and litter on the streets just made it worse. He couldn't really understand what comfort she derived from looking at it.

"I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't pretty sure it was important already," He said. "Please, Buffy. We promised: no more secrets."

She closed her eyes and heaved another deep sigh. "Forever, that's the whole point," she answered.

"Beg pardon?"

"It's what we said to each other, the night we gave each other those rings. We promised each other forever. Forever, that's the whole point."

He could feel his heart cracking open in his chest. "Is that your decision, then?" He asked, forcing his voice to stay even. "Forever? That's the whole point?"

…And besides, it might make him jump to conclusions.

"I haven't made _any_ decision yet," she said hotly, pushing him back and his arms away. "I don't know if I _can_."

She turned on him. "How the hell am I _supposed_ to decide?" She demanded. "It's like asking me to decide between night and day. If you take away either, you only have half a life." She began pacing like a caged lioness. "You know, once upon a time, all I wanted was one normal boyfriend. I didn't think I'd ever have even that, 'cause slaying did so much damage to my social life. Instead I get two men—_two_!—who've given up everything for me. I don't deserve something that wonderful even once—nobody does. How did I get it _twice_? How do I handle that? How do I tell one 'thanks but no thanks'?"

"Lord, give me strength to endure my blessings," Riley said.

"What?"

"Something my mom used to say when we'd gotten all muddy or something like that where we hadn't done anything _wrong_—we were just being a trial by being kids. Sounds like you have the same problem she did: too many blessings."

Buffy chuckled and leaned against the parapet around the edge of the roof, her tension momentarily broken. "Yeah, I'd say nine is a few too many 'blessings'," she agreed. "But at least she had control over that. You two just kind of snuck up on me."

"Sorry," he apologized, a grin appearing on his face to give the lie to his words.

She shook her head and turned away, looking back out over the city. "I don't know what I'm going to do, Riley." She said. "Angel and I went through hell together. Sometimes literally. We took turns saving each other's lives, but then you and I do that, too. But we went through hard, terrible times, and we supported each other. We were there for each other. We got each other through."

"Except when 'each other' was the source of the problem," Riley observed.

Buffy looked back at him suspiciously for a moment. If the source of the comment had been Xander, she would have smacked him. But then, if the source of the comment had been Xander, it would have dripped with bitter sarcasm. Riley was just making a note. Finally, she nodded. "Right," she agreed. "We tried so hard to make it work, but in the end it was just too dangerous while the curse was in place. He had to leave. I tried to deny it at the time, but it was true. I could still kill my mother for going over my head about it, but it was true."

Then she looked away again, staring out at the sun reflecting off the skyscrapers. "Then we come to you. We've been through some hard times, too, but nothing that compares to some of the crap I went through with Angel. Instead…" She paused and took a deep breath. "Instead, you've made me happy. He made me happy, too, but so often it was mixed in with the pain. You brought me out into the sunlight. You showed me what simple happiness could be like."

She paused and looked down at the cars driving by. "He's my husband, and I guess he has been since I was seventeen," She continued. "But he's been gone. You're my lover, and you're the one who's been here. Day or night, Riley? Which half of your life do you give up?"

Riley stood and watched her for a moment in silence, memories and recent experiences that had been percolating in his mind for hours finally coalesced.

"Neither," he said.

She looked back over her shoulder at him, a quizzical expression on her face.

He held out his hand to her. "I think I have an idea," he said. "Come on."

--

Angel opened the door of his apartment to Riley's insistent knocking. He'd been taking a nap, and he was a little bit dazed. Vampires can move around in the daytime as long as they stay out of direct sunlight, but the instinct for them to sleep if there's nothing that they _must_ do is still strong. That being the case, he was too confused to even protest when Riley barged into his apartment, leading Buffy by the hand and saying "We need to talk."

"Uh, okay," Angel agreed in confusion as he closed the door.

Riley guided Buffy to a chair and then began to nervously pace the floor and crack his knuckles, clearly gathering his thoughts for something.

Angel sidled up to Buffy, keeping his eyes on the agitated young man the whole way. "What's this all about?" He whispered.

"I'm not sure," she answered out of the corner of her mouth, keeping her own eyes on her boyfriend. "We were up on the roof, talking about our relationship, when he got an idea of some kind and dragged me down here."

"What were you talking _about_?" He asked.

Buffy sighed and dropped her eyes to her lap. "How I can't decide between you," she admitted. They both deserved better than this. She wouldn't blame them if they both said 'Screw you, enough games' and left her alone. "He's my day. You're my night. How do I choose?"

Angel laid a hand on her shoulder. She knew that she wouldn't get the blame that she probably deserved from him—not yet, in any case—but she flinched anyway.

"Don't worry," he said, turning the clasp into a pat. "We'll think of something."

"I think I may have," Riley said, stopping in his pacing to turn and look at them. "Have either of you ever seen _Paint Your Wagon_?"

Angel nodded, but Buffy shook her head, each with identically blank looks of confusion on their faces.

"You have?" Angel asked, surprised.

"I played Pardner in high school," Riley replied.

"I'm surprised your town allowed a play like that to be shown in the _school_," Angel said.

"There _were_ some complaints," Riley admitted.

"Um, excuse me," Buffy interrupted, raising her hand. "Could we get some Cliff's Notes for the culturally illiterate, here?"

Both men started apologizing and explaining at the same time. They stopped, looked at each other, then Riley waved Angel forward. "You go ahead," he said.

Angel gave a nod and a loose salute, then continued: "_Paint Your Wagon_ is a musical. First it was a play, then a movie with a young Clint Eastwood in it. It's set in the California Gold Rush, and it actually captures the conditions pretty well—minus the violence and disease. It's a comedy, after all. Anyway, the show centers around a grizzled old mountain man named Ben Rumson and his Pardner. Now, one of the problems in the mining camps was that there were no women. At all. The men were terribly lonely—"

"And horny," Buffy smirked.

"And horny," Angel agreed. "And the men also missed the work that women used to do for them back home: cooking, cleaning, etcetera."

"My heart just bleeds with sympathy for them," Buffy said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I can smell it from here," Angel grinned.

"So you can imagine what happened the day a Mormon arrived in the camp with both of his wives," Riley interrupted, his 'teacher instinct' refusing to allow the conversation to get off track.

"The show goes from a wholesome fifties musical to 'The World's Biggest Gangbang'?" Buffy guessed.

That brought him up short. He glanced at Angel as if to say 'Was she like this when she was with you?' But Angel just shrugged, grinning. "Not exactly," Riley said. "But the men are jealous to see a man with two of what they have none of, so they offer to buy one of them."

The smile dropped from Buffy's face. "I see. Slavery. How romantic. Tell me again how this applies to our situation?"

"Just hold on," Riley said, holding up his hands defensively. "We're getting there." He glanced at Angel. "Keep talking, Big Man, you're doing just fine."

Angel shrugged and did as he was told. "The husband pretty much agrees with you," He said to Buffy. "But the second wife, whose name is Elizabeth, is ready to be sold. Her husband and the first wife treat her like dirt—in the movie, they come riding into camp with her walking behind them, if that gives you an idea. She's been especially discontent since her baby died a few weeks before—which the husband is kind enough to bring up in front of everyone. Of course, she still has to take care of the first wife's baby."

"I guess I'd be ready to be sold off, too," Buffy admitted.

"So they start the auction," Angel continued. "Meanwhile, she's off in a tent nursing the first wife's baby. Ben happens to catch sight of her, and drunkenly offers to double whatever the last bid was."

"Which makes his bid 800 and some supplies," Riley said. "Astronomical for the time."

"So she brought in a good price," Buffy said, the acid-dripping sarcasm back. "What an honor."

"He acts more or less like you'd expect," Angel said. "From a man who hasn't even seen a woman in months and had most of his experience with prostitutes. But before he tears off too many of her clothes for a 'wholesome fifties musical', she pulls a derringer on him and explains that she 1) will damn well be treated with some respect and 2) wants a cabin so she'll have something when he moves on, as she knows he will."

"Strangely enough, this wins his admiration," Riley said.

"Not so strange," Angel disagreed. "The first time I met Buffy, she kicked me right to the ground."

"Hmph," Riley grunted in mock resentment. "We had to get a couple dates in before she'd do that to me."

Buffy said nothing. Her face—currently the color of Willow's hair—said it all.

"So anyway," Angel continued. "He starts getting all jealous and possessive. After all, the rest of the men in the camp aren't any less horny, and she's the only woman for miles. To solve that problem, he leads an expedition to hijack six French prostitutes on the way to another camp."

"Now kidnapping. You know, for a comedy, there's a lot of things in this show that aren't funny."

"You could say the same thing about _Animal House_ or _Revenge of the Nerds_," Riley said. "There's a lot of things that wouldn't be funny if they really happened—especially if they happened to you."

"_Any_way," Angel interrupted. "While he's gone, Ben asks Pardner to look out for Elizabeth—he trusts her, but not the other miners. But while he's gone, feelings grow between Pardner and Elizabeth. By the time Ben gets back, she loves them both and can't choose between them. But they hit on a solution: this is California. Wild country. They make their own rules here. She's just come from a marriage where a man had two wives, so why can't she—" Angel's eyes widened as understanding dawned, and Riley started to nod encouragingly. "Have…two…husbands." He paused, returning Riley's expectant stare with one of disbelief. "You're joking."

"Nope," Riley answered, shaking his head.

"Are you serious?" Buffy asked. She had the same disbelief on her face, but it was being rapidly replaced by dawning hope.

"Why not? Willow, Oz, and Tara are trying it."

"Those are special circumstances," Angel protested.

"And these aren't?" Riley countered.

"It's not the same," Angel said. "How would everyone react to something like that?"

"Which 'everyone' are you referring to?" Riley challenged. "Willow, Oz, and Tara, who are doing the same thing? Xander, who's dating an ex-vengeance demon whose body count makes yours look paltry? Faith? Spike?"

Actually, the "everyone" that had been at the forefront of Angel's mind was his (_God's wounds, teeth, and toenails!)_ Mother-in-law. "Look. Wait a second," he said, holding up his hands. "You're trying to convince the wrong person, here. Buffy, what do you think?" He asked, turning to where she still sat in her chair.

She sat there, staring at her hands, a look of stunned wonder and hope growing on her face. When she looked up at them, there were tears shimmering in her eyes, but a blazing smile spreading across her face. She didn't deserve this. She knew she didn't. Did anyone? Ever since her father left, she'd been convinced that something about her drove men away. Angel's departure, necessary as it had been, and Parker's game-playing, hadn't helped. She generally blamed her Slayerness. Not only did it make her keep secrets and have a weird schedule, but how many guys want a girlfriend who can kick their butt at, well, everything? But she'd always wondered if there was something else, something inherently wrong with _her_, that drove them off.

Apparently not.

Never, in her wildest girlhood dreams of knights and princes on white horses and rock stars, had she dared to imagine that she would ever be loved so much.

"Do you really think we can do it?" She asked, her voice charged with hope. "Do you really think we can make it work?"

Riley and Angel looked at each other.

Riley's expression was that of everyone who's ever made an outrageous suggestion and suddenly found that suggestion much closer to implementation than he ever though it would really get: excitement, hope, uncertainty, and more than a little fear.

Angel's face was unsure and confused. He was used to sudden violence, but in any other area of his unlife, he was unaccustomed to snap judgments and swift action. It was something that made participation in the shooting-star life of Buffy Summers a challenge for him.

In fact, he probably came off as indecisive to the humans around him as they carried him along in the riptide of their lives. That wasn't the case, really. It was just that, with forever stretched before him, he could take time to contemplate and consider decisions carefully…

Okay, so maybe he was a _little_ indecisive.

Both of them were thinking the same thing: can I spend my life, not just with Buffy, but with this man?

They hadn't started off on the right foot. There was no question of that. Sure, Angel had beaten up an entire Initiative squad, but the poor dupes hadn't known any better but to attack anything that wasn't on the same evolutionary tree as them. Riley might have, but he'd been primed by Xander to expect the worst. Both men, spontaneously and separately, decided to have a little talk with Xander about that. Angel, remembering other situations where Xander had given other people the worst possible impression of him—Thanksgiving of the same year, his introduction to Faith—decided that it would be a _long_ talk, but decided to forebear punching him in the face, out of gratitude for the previous morning's rescue.

Both of them were embarrassed to remember the macho pissing match in Buffy's dorm room that had followed.

That was their history, before this nightmare had begun. One fight. But even in that fight, they had developed a certain measure of admiration for each other, once they'd stopped being furious: Angel had won the fight, but only barely. He'd defeated an entire initiative squad, which earned Riley's regard, but this one human had nearly taken him. And this was when Riley's super-strength had mostly faded. Sure, he had used weapons. But that's what humans _do_ when confronted with demons. That's how humans _survive_.

Since then, since the last few days of hell had begun, they'd found a great deal to like and admire in each other, despite their initial inclination not to. They worked well together.

What was more, Angel had noticed that, several times in the past few days alone, Buffy's well-being had required both of them. Riley, who wasn't used to the workings of destiny and the Powers, didn't necessarily see anything in that. But Angel wondered if it was a message…

Angel realized that the moment had stretched into an uncomfortable silence, and that both humans were staring at him. Then he realized why: it was Riley's idea, so he was in favor of it by default. Buffy had already expressed her excitement. That left him.

"We can try," he said softly.

If this was a TV show or a movie, that would have been the moment that there was a commercial or a cut to another scene. Instead, the three of them were left standing or sitting around the room, looking at each other as the uncomfortable silence stretched on.

Finally, Angel did something that he didn't often do. He broke the ice. "So," he said. "Does this make me 'Ben'?"

Buffy giggled.

"Well, you _are_ her husband," Riley chuckled.

"But what does that make you?" Angel asked. " 'Cause son, you ain't no Clint Eastwood."

"You know," Buffy said, cutting off Riley's retort about being a real farmer and not just playing one on TV. "We're going to need a bigger bed." She looked at her two hulking lovers and put a hand to her mouth to smother a giggle. "A much bigger bed," she said in a voice choked with laughter.

With that, the tension snapped like an overtuned guitar string, and it took them nearly five minutes to stop laughing.

What wise, mad god made humans to laugh when they're tense or afraid? All of them, Slayerettes and Angel Investigations, had spent so much of these last hellish days laughing like fools, and it had helped like nothing else could have.

"So," Buffy said when she finally regained control of herself. "We're going to try."

"I guess that's the plan," Riley said.

"Yes. Try." Angel agreed.

"Do you want to try now?" She asked.

That left them both a bit confused. What had they just agreed to, if not—

It hit them both at the same time, and their eyes widened in unison. "Oh."

"Try? Now? Uh—" Riley.

"Are you sure?" Angel.

Without another word, Buffy rose from her chair, walked across the room to Angel's bed, sat on the edge, planted her feet wide apart, and held her arms out.

She was sure.

Suddenly, both of them understood what Buffy was doing: talk is cheap. This was the first test. Could they do something even this simple—relatively speaking—together and make it work?

Time to find out.

They crossed the room and knelt in front of her, one on each side.

Buffy was afraid. Could they get through this without jealousy destroying everything that they had built out of pretty words? Besides—taking on two men at once. That was slut-work. That was something the skankiest ho in Sunnydale did at a victory party for the football team. Is that what she had come to? But then, she had done things with Riley that had had the potential to be almost as humiliating and degrading. Things that she had silently sworn to never do when she'd first found out about them. But with him, it had been okay. With him, things that could have been humiliating and degrading had been exciting and fun—no, not just fun, joyful.

So she opened her arms and opened her legs and surrendered to her men and trusted them to make this something joyful.

Then it began, and all thought dissolved into a swirl of sensation.

Kisses. Frantic kisses all over her face. Hungry kisses chewing at her neck, one set of teeth blunt and unafraid to chew hungrily. The other set needle-sharp, scraping delicately over the fragile skin. Kisses on the pale, soft, rounded tops of her breasts as her shirt was carefully unbuttoned and peeled open by two sets of hands. Long, hungry, greedy kisses, unwilling to leave her mouth empty for a moment. Two mouths waiting impatiently for their turn: one hot and moist, sweet-tasting, like root beer and apples. The other dry and cold, tasting of wine and a faint, distant, copper-salt tang.

Hands. Big, strong, thick-fingered hands. Hot, callused hands stroking across her now-bare stomach. Cool, smooth, dexterous hands sliding up her back to unhook her bra strap with practiced ease. Hot hand cupping a breast, stroking a thumb across her nipple. Cold hand sliding up one leather-clad leg, pressing into the throbbing need in her crotch, already feeling the heat that was bleeding through.

Gasp.

Hot hand cupping her bottom, pressing her hard against the cold hand, and the knowledge that they're working together meets the sheer physical ecstasy and it _is_ joyful and she sucks in her breath and she _knows_ she's going to have to cry out and—

_Knock_

Courtesy taken care of, at least in theory, Cordelia swung the door open. "Hey, Angel, you'd better _Oh, my God, I'm blind!_" She snapped her face away and covered her eyes with both hands.

Riley and Angel leaped back like Buffy had just burst into flames.

"Close the door!" Buffy shrieked as she pulled her shirt closed.

Angel was across the room and hustling Cordelia out the door before the words were all the way out of Buffy's mouth.

--

Cordelia Chase was not accustomed to being hustled out of a room like that. With Angel's speed thrown into the equation, it was a pretty dizzying experience.

She turned around, trying to get her bearings, and the door slammed in her face as she did so. Needless to say, she was not pleased. Once again, Buffy was at the absolute center of attention of not one but _two_ of the three hottest men in the vicinity (and the third was sniffing around Faith. Damn Slayers!). She could easily learn to hate her all over again. No time for that right now, however.

"Look," she announced to the door, in a voice that was just below a shout. "I don't _care_ what you're doing in there. Your freaky lifestyle choices are your own business. Just get dressed and get downstairs. There's something you need to hear." She paused, considering what it would take to pry Angel out of a room once he'd scented Buffy in heat.

"Lindsey's on the phone."

--

"Hello, Angel. I hope I wasn't interrupting anything."

"Nothing I can't pick up later. Now what do you want?"

"I want you to do a little job for me."

"I'm not in the mood for jokes, Lindsey. Call me back when you're ready to be serious."

"Wait just a second! I think you'll actually like this one."

Angel snorted. "This, I have to hear."

"I want you to kill Angelus."

Stunned, both by the words themselves and the fact that Lindsey really meant it, Angel sat down heavily.

"Angel? Still there, Big Man?"

That startled Angel even further. Riley and Lindsey independently coming up with the same nickname for him? Did it mean anything? He shook that off as a topic for later. "Yeah, I'm here. I just would've thought that you'd be working _with_ him."

"I am."

"I see. And you're throwing him to me because…?"

"I have my reasons."

"Why don't you tell me some of them? Just to lay my mind at ease."

"That's really none of your business."

"Convince me it's not a trap, Lindsey," Angel said sharply. "And be persuasive. Angelus _will_ find out about this, and if he does so before we come after him…well, I don't even _know_ what Angelus would do to someone who actually _betrayed_ him. He's tortured more than one man to death just because he didn't like his face."

"Two days ago, Angelus came into my office and killed Lilah and Bryce. He's taken Wolfram & Hart hostage and forced us to do his bidding. We're the ones who contacted the Scourge for him. Not many of our demon clients are happy with us for that."

"My heart weeps for you."

"Look, he's not even a paying client. Even if he was, his goals run counter to the company's overall plan: he wants to destroy the world. We just want to change it to our advantage."

"I see. He wants to make the world a physical wasteland, not just a moral one, so you feel the need to stand up to him. Be more persuasive."

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. When Lindsey finally spoke again, his voice was toneless and tightly controlled. "Yesterday, I get into my office and find him sitting there, waiting for me. It seems that, after eating two police officers to help him recover from fighting you, he came straight to Wolfram & Hart. After walking straight through our front door, looking very much like a supernatural being, he set up camp in my office and ate six interns."

"Getting annoyed that he's leaving such a mess for you to clean up?"

Lindsey ignored him. "I actually liked the last one, but he got to her when he wasn't really that hungry anymore. I assume you know what that means."

Angel winced. He did.

"I really don't care to go into detail, but if you've ever seen a horror anime, remember that Angelus has tentacles now. If you don't get it, ask your friends. I'm sure at least one of them will."

"I'll do that," Angel said. "Just a moment." He looked up and waved Xander over.

Xander pointed to himself in confusion. _Me?_

Angel nodded and waved him over again. When the younger man arrived, he covered the phone's mouthpiece. "Horror anime, female intern, Angelus's tentacles. Ring a bell?"

Apparently, it did. Xander's face went white, and he swallowed hard. Then he took a deep breath and swallowed hard again. Angel realized with a sudden start that Xander was trying very hard not to puke. "Bad," Xander said queasily. "Very bad. Now, please excuse me. I need to go get some ginger ale or something."

Angel removed his hand from the mouthpiece. "Okay, I'm convinced." He said.

"Good."

He filled Angel in on the rest of the situation: the misfortunes that had befallen half of the Scourge, the address of the dockside warehouses where Angelus and the remaining Scourge were holed up gathering their strength, and the fact that several hundred remained.

When he'd finished with that, Lindsey offered to provide them with whatever tools and weapons they needed.

"Well, we have what we need to fight Angelus," Angel replied. "It either will work or it won't. But there _is_ something you can do…"

**The Mirror Shatters**

Angelus looked in the mirror, which was just as useless as it had ever been. All he saw reflected in it was the Spartan bedroom he'd made out of an old office. That was just as well. He knew what he would see: Liam. It seemed that after nearly 250 years, Liam was his "default" form. The form that his injured body healed toward.

The thought disgusted him.

Not that it mattered anymore. He had absolute control over this body now, and he could mold it like putty, into any shape he wished. But even that seemed rather pointless. This body had become a hollow shell, a crust over his true self. It mattered no more to him than a rather beat-up old suit of clothes that he'd never really cared that much for in the first place. If Liam and his little friends showed up—as he was sure they would—expecting that battering at his body would actually affect him, as it had before, they were in for a surprise.

All he had left to do was break the shell and shed it. The cracks were already showing in some places.

Soon. Tonight. But not yet. Right now, he had to go out and talk to his dupes.

Troops. Of course he meant troops. The face that he found so repulsive quirked into a sarcastic grin.

Time to make history…end.

--

"This is crazy."

"It's going to work."

"This is _suicide_."

Wesley sighed, lowered the binoculars he'd been looking through, and glanced up at Xander.

Both of them were in the top floor of an abandoned building across the street from the Scourge compound, waiting for nightfall. There'd been some discussion of attacking in daylight, in the hopes that the sun would still have some effect on Angelus, but that plan had been scrapped on the grounds that it took two of their most powerful Warriors out of play. Besides, there were several hundred Scourge who didn't mind sunlight at all.

They'd been watching for hours, since soon after Lindsey MacDonald had called. Wesley, taking his turn, was crouched in front of a broken window. Xander stood beside it, careful to keep himself hidden behind the wall.

"It's _going_ to work," Wesley repeated more forcefully. "Unless you can think of something better, in which case, _please_ speak up because this is the best we have."

"I don't know—have Riley call in the National Guard?" Xander suggested. "We don't have to tell them they're demons. We could say it's a neo-nazi terrorist group."

Wesley paused and thought about that for a moment. It made a surprising amount of sense, considering the source. The boy seemed to have grown a brain since he'd last seen him—and why not? Hadn't he, himself, grown a spine since then?

After a moment more of thought, Wesley shook his head. "They'd be slaughtered. And if Angelus reached his final form, we'd be faced with several hundred Kakistos-level vampires with assault weapons."

"Damn. Good point."

Wesley turned back toward the window, raising the binoculars back to his eyes. The Scourge had been surprisingly bold, patrolling the warehouse compound and even the neighborhood, as if they really were Nazis—in the Germany of 1940. They hadn't really been noticed because this street, for some distance either way, was an abandoned wasteland just waiting for the politicians to get their kickbacks in order before the demolition crews started their work. The only inhabitants had been the homeless, and they had either fled or suffered unpleasant fates in the past few days.

Now the Sun had set into the Pacific, and only a last tint of scarlet light stained the sky. The Scourge patrols had pulled in from all parts of the compound and neighborhood, locked the gates behind them, and started to gather in front of the largest warehouse.

Wesley put down the binoculars, pulled out his cell phone, and flipped it open.

"It's time."

--

The two Amalthiss demons who had been left at the main gate never even had the chance to raise the alarm, despite their heightened senses and telepathy. They were standing at their posts one moment, the next moment two crossbow bolts flashed out of the night and struck each of them in their third eye, and they were down.

The Scooby Gang emerged from the shadows, crossbows up and at the ready. Firearms were kept holstered. It was too early to announce their presence.

Buffy stepped forward and tugged at the gate, to no avail. "It's locked," she whispered back over her shoulder. Of course, between her, Faith, Angel, and Spike, a locked chain-link gate was little obstacle. But breaking the gate down created the same problem as gunfire.

"Do you want to pick the lock, or should we?" Willow asked Giles, holding up the hand that she had clasped with Tara.

"Let me try first," he said. "Magic might be sensed." He stepped toward the gate and Cordelia's hands flew defensively to her hair, but rather than steal a hairpin from her, he pulled a pouch of lock picks out of his breast pocket and set to work.

"Glad to see that you've stocked up on the proper tools for your juvie skills," Cordelia said.

"These are Angel's," Giles replied without looking up from the lock.

A number of surprised faces turned to Angel, but he just shrugged. "Sometimes subtlety is better than force," he said. "As we're seeing right now."

_Click._

"Ah." Giles stood and slid the gate open. "And voila."

--

They had a parking lot to cross. They didn't like that—too much open space. But what else were they going to do?

They crossed carefully, avoiding the pools of light from the lonely, scattered lampposts and scurrying between buildings.

They could have just walked boldly up to the back of the crowd. The entire Scourge was gathered in front of the largest warehouse like a cult awaiting a revelation from their god—and wasn't that just what they'd become?—and their full, rapt attention was on the door. Nothing else.

After a few more minutes, when the last of the sun-stain had faded from the sky and the stars twinkled down from the ice-clear blackness above, a motor suddenly whirred to life inside the warehouse, and the great door started to rattle upwards.

Angelus, dressed in his customary black leather pants and wine-colored silk shirt, emerged from the mouth of the warehouse, and a murmur ran through the Scourge ranks. Only the officers had been in to speak with the reborn Old One until now. Why had their messiah chosen to take such a repulsive form?

Angelus mounted the makeshift stage and surveyed his audience. One by one, the Scourge grew silent.

The Scooby Gang crouched deeper into their hiding places, trying to see, but even more importantly, trying to avoid being seen.

Angelus stepped to the lip of the stage and raised his arms. The silence became absolute. "My brothers!" He boomed. "The Night is upon us!"

The Scourge broke out into applause, but Angelus did not lower his arms, and after a moment, they quieted.

"Tonight is the night that demonkind shall rise up from the cracks and crannies where we have hidden, and throw _down_ our human oppressors!" He closed his hands into fists and slowly began to lower them. "Tonight is the night that we shall purge the human infection from our races, and we shall destroy the collaborators who live among humans, live like humans, and sell out their own kind!"

The Scourge began to applaud again, and this time, Angelus simply stood with his hands at his sides and let it come. He resumed speaking when the applause started to fade.

"The humans will not easily surrender what they have stolen," He warned. "And many of you will die. But have no fear. You will die in service to the most glorious cause history has ever seen, and you will die knowing that our cause will spread like wildfire among all the true demons of the world." He gave a wide sweep of his arm, illustrating that worldwide fire-front. "And when the world has been cleansed, and only the purest children of the Old Ones remain, that is the day that the Old Ones shall return, to find the world finally made right!"

His arms shot into the air, and the Scourge burst into uproarious applause that just went on and on.

Fools. Saints below, how he despised them. When he was finished with the Earth, there would be no pie-in-the-sky demon paradise. There would be no return of the Old Ones. Maybe he would have settled for that once, but not now. He wasn't going to end human history just to have demon history take its place. No, he would burn it all down and salt the Earth so there would be nothing left, and nothing would ever rise from it again.

His vision had grown even beyond that vision that he had shown to Liam. He would descend into the depths, yes, but not to pick his teeth with a few fish, no. In the days since his release from the prison of Liam's body, he had realized the reason that a disproportionate number of vampires were male, and why women were such a favorite food. He had realized the true purpose of the vampire race itself. A purpose he could now accomplish, since he was no longer bound to blood as his medium for devouring life.

He would descend into the depths and devour the very life force of the planet, drink from the throat of Gaia Herself. He would accomplish what vampires had been created to accomplish, what each secretly wanted in their unbeating hearts. He would murder the adulterous Earth Mother.

Then he would rise up from the depths as the Earth and all potential she would ever have to support life—including the Old Ones—died around him, and he would laugh in the face of the widowed Sun. Oh, the Sun had his eight other barren lovers to shine upon, yes, but Angelus would murder his wife and children. The Sun's scream of rage and grief would burn him away, yes, but he would laugh even in the flames and his laughter would echo among the stars forever.

The skin on his palms cracked, and blood started to drip onto the ground and run down his arms. And it wasn't human blood. Oh, my, no. The blood was _alive_. And as it struck and writhed away, the wood—even the blacktop—was left warped, pitted, and scored. Scarred.

Stigmata. Under other circumstances, a holy miracle. A twisted blasphemy now.

"I know this, for I have seen the signs," he said. "I know that this is the Night, for tonight is the night—" Black claws slid from his fingertips. Blood trickled from the breaks they made in his skin. "—that I shall be—" He hooked his claws into his shirt and tore it off in wine-colored shreds.

Underneath, the skin of his chest looked like translucent, flesh-colored glass. Beneath it, showing through, was a moving, writhing darkness. It began to flow up his neck into his face and out his arms, as if it had been concealing itself until then, and now felt free to reveal itself.

"Transfigured."

Darkness flowed into his eyes, and they were transformed into depthless black orbs.

Angel, who'd been holding his broadsword up over his head for the past minute, let it drop.

Half a dozen crossbow bolts and a volley of gunfire tore into the back ranks of the Scourge.

A few of the gray-suited demons fell silent to the ground. A few more fell writhing and screaming. The rest turned to face their attackers.

The previous day, the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations had faced the vanguard. Dozens of Scourge.

They'd nearly lost.

Now, they faced hundreds. Two Slayers, two witches, a werewolf, two vampires—one of whom had a soul—and eight normal humans stood against hundreds of angry demons and a reborn Old One.

Best to strike first then. And make it count.

Before the Scourge could fully get their bearings and realize what was happening, the assembled heroes charged.

The five Warriors, Spike, and Oz formed a flying wedge, with Buffy at the point, flanked by Riley and Angel.

Their initial hit was devastating.

Riley, ecstatic to have an actual assault rifle in his hands again, poured fire into the Scourge ranks. Maybe bullets didn't _kill_ all of their opponents. But they sure didn't feel _good_.

Meanwhile, Oz, with feral grin and a laconic comment that "The rules are different this time," once more unleashed red-furred death among the gray-clad demons.

Faith, having learned her lesson about reach the last time, had perhaps overcorrected. Still, the huge claymore she had borrowed from Angel, nearly as long as Buffy, was doing its job perfectly well.

The second rank was composed of everyone else except Willow and Tara, who were in the very back, holding hands and chanting.

The initial charge slowed, starting to bog down. There were hundreds of Scourge. Hundreds. Might as well be millions. Sooner or later, this clumped, flat-footed mob would regain its wits and start surrounding them. Even if it didn't, the Scourge could just keep coming at them in never-ending waves until the Scoobies were too exhausted to run or fight, and then finally take them down like deer pulled down by wolves.

They couldn't win. But that was okay. That wasn't the plan.

Now the Scourge were starting to push back. Oz, who had gone off on a bit of a merry rampage of his own, returned to the relative safety of the line, throwing a few shuriken—some of which were cold iron or silver, because hey, who knows?—to cover his retreat.

Now they were starting to lose ground, and the second rank stepped up to join the first, firing guns and slashing with swords and axes and Anya swung a staff into the spot on a Shinmeer demon's side where the ribs didn't _quite_ cover the lung.

The Scourge just kept coming. Riley had already slapped in a third clip and soon that assault rifle would be nothing but a particularly unwieldy club, but it didn't matter.

All they had to do was hold the line. Just a little longer.

Tara and Willow finished their chant with a triumphant shout.

A hole appeared in the middle of the Scourge ranks as a ten foot by ten foot square of ground fell out from under them, dropping them into the sewer.

"Go!" Buffy shouted.

With a final heave and volley of gunfire, the Scoobies hurled their opponents back, then turned and ran.

With a cheated, enraged howl, the Scourge gave chase.

Angelus shook his head in disgust. Idiots. If he gave a damn one way or the other how this fight came out, he'd be pissed.

--

More and more Scourge fell into the hole, pushed and driven by the surging mob. Still, it wasn't that far of a drop and none of them were really hurt. Maybe humans would have been, but not demons.

One of them, a lieutenant whose mostly humanoid body had a spiky, crablike carapace, wondered if they were really that stupid, or if they had further plans.

Several valves started turning by themselves, and it had its answer.

It only had time to say something in its native tongue that was roughly equivalent to _Oh, shit!_ before the gas main ignited and the steam conduits opened.

--

_Openspaceopenspace must get to open space._

The Scooby Gang burst out of the cluster of warehouses and into the parking lot.

_Safe! Or saf_er _at least._

--

Manhole covers flipped into the air like coins throughout the compound, propelled by geysers of fire and steam, spewing clouds of searing, scalding death into the Scourge. The largest such eruption, of course, was the hole down into the sewers. Square in the middle of their ranks.

Similar explosions ripped through the warehouses, setting them afire and turning their windows into fusillades of whickering glass shards.

Several such shards sliced Angelus. He stood calmly, ignoring the damage to his body entirely as more of the living blood started to trickle from the new wounds, and tendrils of darkness started to rise from them like black smoke.

--

Stung, burned, and furious, the Scourge howled on in raging pursuit. Some of their victims in the past had fought quite hard, but never had so few caused so much damage.

Some of them had already taken to the air. There was no way the heroes would even make it the hundred yards or so across the parking lot, let alone escape.

But that was okay. That wasn't the plan.

--

"That's the signal," Lorne said as he saw the entire warehouse compound burst into flames. He raised his sword over his head and waved it to catch the attention of the fifty or so demons gathered behind him. "Charge!" He shouted.

--

Angel didn't even slow down when the first flyer landed in front of him, attempting to cut him off from the rest of the retreating group. He just brought his axe up to his shoulder and swung it with his full, running momentum behind it.

The vulturelike creature fell out of his way in two pieces, but then Angel noticed that the rest of the group had turned to stand.

And he saw what was coming behind them, and oh, wasn't it a beautiful sight?

Upon first seeing their prey slow and stop, the pursuing Scourge had sped up in anticipation of victory. Upon spotting the approaching mob of demons, they'd slowed down. Then, their triumphant grins turned to scowls, they speeded up again. Just a bunch of half-breeds. What could they do?

Lorne, dressed in studded leather armor that he'd also brought from Pylea, his sword raised high, led the charge through the gate. Mowl, who'd been right at his side, just lowered his shoulder and crashed through the section of fence right beside the gate.

The two forces came together with a sound like rolling thunder, and at first the Scooby-led spearhead of Earthbound demons made good headway into the disorganized, wounded mob that the Scourge had become. Mowl stampeded right over these threats to his coming calf, and Lorne danced through them with razor-edged grace. But it was still dozens against hundreds, and the Scourge was on familiar ground now. Perhaps human weapons, human magic, and human ingenuity had confounded them, but they could fight other, impure demons. Killing demons was their _purpose_, killing demons was what they _did_.

The Scourge didn't see the irony. And if anyone on the other side did, they didn't think it was funny. Naturally powerful and aggressive they might be, but many of Lorne's demon force weren't as experienced in combat as the Scoobies, and things started to get ugly rather quickly.

An Anomovic bridesmaid took a venomous porcupine-quill in the eye. A scorpion-demon's stinger impaled the Brakken groomsman who'd been diving to prevent it.

Oz dodged just an instant too slow, and a quadruple-line of slashes appeared across his right shoulder.

Faith took a bludgeoning tail-slap to the knee. Anyone but a Slayer would have been crippled. She was a Slayer, and she was left hobbling and dropping back from the front line.

A Ru-shando demon in Lorne's force had been keeping the Scourge disoriented and easy prey with its telepathic abilities until its reptilian, antennaed head was bashed in.

Joyce chopped down the scorpion demon, but a creature like a three-foot, bat-winged lamprey latched onto her neck. It was pulled away and killed before any serious damage could be done, but it still left a ring of bleeding pinpricks behind.

A group of Asclepians had joined Lorne's force in order to avenge their fallen brother. He might have been an embarrassment, but he was still a brother, and he had died for refusing to breach his ethics as a healer. They were at the rear, trying to return the wounded to action as quickly as possible, but there were getting to be more wounded than they could handle. And they could do nothing about the dead.

For a brief moment, Lorne found himself back to back with Buffy in the chaos of the melee. "It's getting bad out here, little sister!" He shouted. "I hope there's a plan B!"

"We expected this to happen!" She shouted back. "It's all part of Plan A! Just have your people fall back!" She raised her voice even higher and shouted "Willow! Fireworks!"

Angel, the nearest member of the Scooby Gang, heard her shout and raised his own voice. "Fireworks!"

Riley, his voice accustomed to shouting orders in a situation like this, bellowed "Fireworks!"

The word leaped from one member of the Scooby Gang to another, until it reached Willow where she and Tara were, back near the Asclepian demons.

"That's the signal," Tara said.

"I'm on it," Willow said as her hand filled with crackling energy. In a moment, her hand had disappeared into a sparking blue orb.

"Here goes nothing," she muttered as she drew her arm back and hurled the orb into the sky.

It shot up like a just-launched comet until it hit the peak of its flight and exploded into a shower of blazing, multicolored sparks.

All up and down the street, engines roared to life.

_Four Hours Earlier_

"So how do we tell the _good_ monsters from the _bad_ monsters?" Gunn's second-in-command Jamal asked. Gunn and Lorne's people had arrived at the designated rendezvous point—a closed railroad bridge—at almost exactly the same time, and there would have been a fight if Gunn hadn't explained _very_ quickly. As it was, the two groups were standing around eyeing each other suspiciously.

"Shirts and skins," Gunn answered.

"Don't jerk me off, Gunn, this ain't funny."

"I'm not," Gunn answered. "What I mean is, every one of the bad guys is gonna be wearing a gray Nazi uniform. Our boys are in their street clothes." He glanced over to where Lorne was chatting with Wesley, dressed in his studded leather armor. "Mostly."

"Now what the hell is this?" Jamal exclaimed as the roar-cough of an old, neglected, and now overtaxed engine approached.

Gunn turned to see what Jamal was looking at and couldn't help but agree. A dilapidated, primer-red pickup truck, stacked high with wooden crates, was approaching. It pulled to a stop near the other vehicles, and Lindsey MacDonald climbed out. He was dressed in work boots, worn blue jeans, and a flannel shirt, and he had a crow bar in his good hand. He looked around the assembled people and demons, apparently looking for a familiar face, until he spotted Gunn, who he waved over with the crow bar.

Gunn went, wondering just what the hell was going on, with Jamal following close on his heels.

"There's some gifts for you in the boxes," Lindsey said as they arrived. "There should be enough for all of your people, if the count you gave me was right." He held out the crowbar. "You'd better unpack them. I can't do it with this," he explained, holding up his prosthetic hand.

Jamal snatched the crow bar from his hand. He was reluctant to take orders from a white man and a stranger, however polite, reasonable, and beneficial those orders might be. However, he was entirely unwilling to allow Gunn to do so. "What do you know about all this, redneck?" He challenged.

"Me?" Lindsey asked as he reached back into the cab. Gunn noticed that the faintest hint of a drawl had entered the lawyer's voice. What kind of game was he playing? "I'm just along for the ride." He pulled a sledgehammer out of the cab and slung it over his shoulder. "City slicker."

--

"He came himself?" Cordelia asked, flabbergasted.

"Why are you so surprised?" Angel asked from the darkness under the bridge. "You knew he likes to fight his own battles."

"Dressed like _that_?" She demanded.

"Guess he didn't want to ruin any of his suits," Angel said.

"So what do we do?" Buffy asked. "I'm glad he's here and I'm glad he brought his arsenal with him, but we're still too outnumbered for that to matter. Somebody better have a brilliant plan."

"Agincourt."

_The Battle: Fireworks In the Air_

"There's the signal, Kentucky!" Jamal shouted from the back of Lindsey's truck.

Lindsey shook his head as he punched the engine. Kentucky. Ah, well. He'd been called worse.

All up and down the deserted street, engines roared to life. A dozen vehicles, each stuffed with Gunn's people, converged on the warehouse compound.

_Four Hours Earlier_

Everyone turned to where Spike was standing in the shadows beneath the bridge.

"Beg pardon?" Buffy asked.

"Agincourt," Spike repeated.

"Gesundheit," Xander said.

Spike shook his head and rolled his eyes at the absolute gits he had to deal with. "Back me up on this, Watcher," he said to Giles. He directed the rest of remarks to the Colonials in his audience. "It's English military history. You might've read it in Shakespeare if an American education was worth the paper the books are printed on."

Giles, Wesley, and Angel were all nodding impatiently. "Yes, yes, Spike, I've heard of it," Giles said. "Please get to the point."

"Hey, if you're going to be pissy about it—"

"Spike!"

"Henry V is invading France, and he gets cornered at the field of Agincourt," Spike said without preamble. "The French charge, and they focus on what they think is the major threat: the English knights. Problem is, they don't know about a little technological innovation the English have with 'em: longbows. They have a range like nothing the French have ever seen, and they punch right through armor. The French never knew what hit 'em. Legend has it the English lost a couple dozen compared to 10,000 or so French. They just kept focusing on those knights while the archers cut 'em down like wheat."

_The Battle: Archers of Agincourt_

The chain-link fences had been half torn away by the explosions already, and the vehicles roared right through them.

Cars and trucks barreled across the parking lot, closing in on the Scourge column from both sides, and for a moment it looked like they were going to ram into the surging, gray-suited demons. But at the last second, they turned parallel to the column and raced up its length, away from the hand-to-hand battle.

The vehicles' passengers pulled out Lindsey's "gifts"—uzis, assault rifles, and all manner of handguns—and started to pour fire into the Scourge's flanks. Some of the weapons fired lead, but others were loaded with iron, silver, and various other exotic payloads. Weapons and ammunition both were saturated with spells of poison and death. The Scourge fell like dominoes.

Even then, the Scourge could perhaps have carried the day. They still outnumbered their enemies—though the odds grew more even by the second—and they had flyers in the air. They could have overturned or disabled the vehicles, overcome their new attackers with force or magic.

Instead, they did exactly what Spike's plan called for them to do: they ignored the pathetic humans and their silly toys and focused on the "real" threat: the Scooby Gang, Angel Investigations, and Lorne's demons.

Within minutes, the Scourge was reduced to about fifty demons who were too closely engaged to be shot without endangering allies, so the cars and trucks circled up and formed a perimeter, trapping the few remaining Scourge.

The drivers and passengers poured out, joining the melee fresh and ready. Lindsey, one-handedly wielding his sledgehammer with brutal skill, quickly gained the respect of those who'd never expected a lawyer to fight his own battles. Whatever else he was, Lindsey MacDonald was a top-drawer brawler.

The librarians and the lounge singer who were leading the attack weren't particularly surprised.

When the last of the Scourge infantry had been decapitated by Faith, and the last Scourge flyer had been shot out of the sky, the allied forces came to a stop, caught their breath, and looked around at all the gray-uniformed corpses they'd made as they realized they'd won.

"We done here?" Jamal asked as he leaned against Lindsey's truck, carelessly dangling a bloody crowbar from his hand.

"No," Angel answered worriedly. "Where's Angelus? We haven't seen him since—"

"Look!" Faith shouted suddenly, pointing.

Everyone obeyed. For a moment, their eyes squinted and watered against the midnight sun that the blazing warehouses had become.

Then a shadow stained the light.

The shadow resolved into a man-shape, then clarified until it was Angelus.

Or whatever he had become.

He was naked. Perhaps he had thrown away his shirt, but his pants had clearly been shredded from his body by the fusillades of glass and debris. Not that it mattered. He barely looked like a man anymore anyway. The darkness swirled and billowed inside him, growing and filling in the few remaining areas that were still a natural color. Tendrils of darkness rose from every break in his skin like wisps of black smoke, except that they whipped and grasped and curled like living things rather than merely blowing in the wind.

Though the blacktop had softened and melted in the heat of the burning warehouses until it was almost liquid, Angelus left no footprints where he walked. Instead, he left a trail of his living blood behind him, writhing and grasping for food that was out of reach. The blood sizzled and died in the heat, but he didn't seem to care.

"That our target?" Jamal asked, his voice tight. Part of him—some deep, instinctive, spinal-reflex part of _all_ of them—knew that this thing, this dark, hollow, manshape _thing_ coming at him across the fire-lit parking lot was a Bad Thing. Perhaps the worst Thing he would ever, could ever encounter. And if it reached him, death was not the worst thing that could happen to him, but the best.

Every human there, and most demons, wanted nothing more than to scream and run away at that moment.

"Yes," Angel answered. "But—"

"That's all I needed to know," Jamal said. Then he raised his voice to a bellow. "Waste him!" He roared.

"No!" Angel screamed, but it was too late. Gunn's followers drew their weapons and emptied the remainders of their clips at the approaching Angelus.

Many, blinded by the fire and ancestral fear, simply let fly in random directions, punching into burning buildings and splashing into the melted blacktop.

Others did not miss.

A bullet struck Angelus above the left eye, tearing away a quarter of his skull. Darkness began to billow from the gap like black smoke from a factory smokestack, and he started to laugh.

"Stop!" Angel shouted uselessly, unable to make himself heard over the gunfire. "You're helping him!

A bullet punched into Angelus's chest, blowing an exit wound the size of a fist out his back. Darkness billowed and spread behind him like wings, eclipsing the fires.

His laughter just grew louder.

"Damn it," Buffy cursed. "In the end, those things never help. Willow!" She shouted. "Spear!"

Here a runnel was dug in the empty flesh of a shoulder, there a finger was blown off, there a kneecap shattered. All it brought was more of the living blood, more whipping, snapping, grasping tentacles of living darkness, surging and pressing against their prison.

And more laughter.

Willow held out her hand, and the spear—cached safely away from the battle in one of the "observation posts" they'd taken—flew into her grasp.

More laughter, echoing impossibly off the brick and soft asphalt, growing louder rather than fading away.

Willow slapped the spear into Buffy's hand.

Buffy took two steps, drawing her arm back and instinctively taking an Olympic-perfect javelin thrower's stance despite the fact that she'd never done so before in her life, and hurled the spear.

A bullet shattered Angelus's jaw, but the impossible laughter continued. A writhing tongue of darkness lashed out from the gaping, ruined hole that had once resembled a human mouth and slapped the spear to the ground in mid-flight.

Silver fire flashed, and Angelus stopped laughing and bellowed. Threads of white light stained the tentacle where it had touched the spear, but were quickly swirled away into the darkness.

"It hurt him!" Anya shouted triumphantly. "We can hurt him!" For the first time since Belial's rising, hope seemed justified.

"I missed," Buffy gasped. "Oh, God, I missed."

Willow, just a step behind Buffy, snapped her hand toward the spear, and it shot back toward Buffy's waiting grip.

Angelus roared again, and it sounded like something ancient, powerful, and hungry, like a tyrannosaurus or a forest fire. But mixed in with the roar was the sound of chanting, the thunderous baritone of dozens of Angeluses chanting in a language so old that even demons had forgotten it.

Willow screamed and collapsed, bleeding from her ears, and the spear clattered to the ground.

The roar turned back into the mad, roaring laughter, but the chanting continued.

No jokes, no taunts. Whatever shreds of humanity Angelus had stolen from Liam of Galway had been burned away. Only the darkness remained.

Still laughing, the darkness and the living blood spreading below him like an oil slick, Angelus rose into the air. Then he stopped laughing and his primary voice joined the chanting and all of those united against him were blasted to the ground and the darkness erupted from his eyes and engulfed him at last.

Silence.

The Warriors were the first to raise their heads, but slowly, one-by-one, everyone began to pick themselves up. Tara cradled a pale, shivering Willow, while Oz gently dabbed away the blood that had run from her eyes like tears.

Everyone else stared at where Angelus had been. Now an orb of darkness ten feet in diameter hung in the air like a hole in the night. Blood still dripped from the darkness, but it was quiescent now, simply gathering in a pool.

"Is that…it?" Joyce asked. "Is that all that's going to happen?"

As if in mocking answer to her question—and perhaps it was, perhaps Angelus retained enough of his cruel sense of humor for that—the orb began to pulse.

"I kinda think maybe fuckin' not," Faith answered, backing away.

Everyone followed her lead as the orb began to pulse and surge, expanding with each cycle.

Pulse.

One inch.

Pulse.

Two more.

The voices began to mutter their chant again.

Pulse.

Four more inches.

Angel watched the spear out of the corner of his eye. He was the only one who had contributed to it that could approach Angelus now.

Pulse.

Hold.

What was happening? Was it waiting for something?

The orb exploded outward, spreading like a manta or an oil slick, blotting out the light of the fires and the stars, lashing with tentacles of pure darkness. The chanting erupted back out to a shout.

"Run!" Angel screamed as he dove for the spear, hoping his friends would be able to hear and obey.

He caught the spear and rolled, feeling the chill of one of Angelus's tentacles as it passed within a hair's breadth of his legs.

His hands were already blazing with the same silver fire that had burned Angelus when he completed the roll and came to his feet.

_Not now. Oh, please, if anyone's up there listening, don't let this happen _now_._

The pain was fantastic.

The spear was a holy thing, consecrated in water and pain, its very wood a gift from the Powers. It rejected his corrupt touch violently.

But as he came to his feet, he saw his friends and allies, human and demon, stumbling away from the writhing, spreading darkness.

Why wasn't Angelus's chant affecting him? He could barely _hear_ it. Was the spear protecting him even as it rejected him?

It didn't matter. Let the spear reject him. He was the only one who could carry it to the Heart of the Darkness now.

He set his face, gripped the spear more tightly with his burning hands, and plunged into the darkness.

--

Angelus's spell of pain lashed at the humans and demons of the resistance, but it struck hardest at the magic-users and the servants of the Powers. Riley carried a writhing Buffy while Gunn did the same for Faith, both forcing themselves to ignore both the bleeding slashes and whip marks that appeared on the (_God, she's so tiny)_ women they carried, and their own spasms of pain. Joyce supported Giles, while Wesley leaned on Lorne. Cordelia, screaming that she was blind again, oh, God, not again, oh, God, it hurt, was guided by Xander. Oz had staggered a few steps, trying to support both Tara and Willow, who were in a state of collapse almost as complete as the Slayers, before Anya arrived to take Willow. Perhaps he might have preferred the opposite, but he was stronger than Anya and Tara was bigger than Willow.

Spike was looking out for himself.

"Riley?" Buffy moaned as she stirred in Riley's arms.

"I'm here, Buffy," He said.

"Where's Angel?"

"He's okay," he said. "He's right behind us." In truth, he was too focused on carrying her and fighting the ripping pain in his gut to even notice where Angel was.

"No," she moaned, starting to struggle in his arms. "No, he's not, he's—Angel—" Her eyes flew open just in time to see Angel, gripping a spear made of silver fire, splash through the dripping blood and plunge into the wound in reality that Angelus had become. "Angel, no!" She screamed, thrashing violently in his arms as the flaming spear—now the only part of Angel visible—descended like a shooting star into Angelus's impossible depths.

Riley couldn't very well hold a struggling Slayer against her will, even if she was weak and injured. He gripped her tight to his chest anyway. "Buffy, stop!" he said. "You can't go after him. He's the only one who can do this!"

She might have kept struggling anyway, but a bolt of pain like a hot iron spike drove into her back, bending her entire body into a bowlike rictus of agony. When it passed, she was left limp and weeping in his arms.

It was about then that Riley noticed the ever-spreading pool of living blood was all but lapping at their heels. "Come on," he said. He staggered as pain bloomed in his right knee on his next step, but he gritted his teeth and kept walking and it was gone as abruptly as it had come. "Let's make sure you're still here for him when he gets back."

--

Angel was falling through the darkness. And the darkness was vast. It was an infinite abyss, a pit where he could fall forever without ever even seeing another creature, a void that could swallow worlds and be no closer to full.

And the darkness was cold. Cold as the darkness at the bottom of the deep sea trenches. Cold as the empty reaches of space. Angel could feel the cold settling into his bones, making them ache, feel old and brittle; could feel his stolen blood slowing and turning to sludge in his veins.

But worst of all, the darkness was alive. And the darkness was hungry. A human would have been devoured by the first touch of the darkness. Perhaps he would have been, too, his life or his soul or whatever it was that made him something other than a corpse drained away and made one with the darkness.

But the spear kept the darkness at bay.

_So you've come._

The darkness was speaking. Unlike the awesome Voices of the other mighty supernatural beings he had encountered in the past few days, it was a familiar voice. It wasn't even particularly loud. It was, of course, his own voice. But he couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, or even if it was in his ears or in his mind.

"That's right!" He answered, shouting back out into the darkness. "I've come to kill you!"

_I see. Prevent my dastardly plans. Avenge my victims. Kiss the girl and ride off into the sunset. Is that the plan here? And all you bring with you is that little toothpick? You're really not very good at this, are you?_

Angel didn't answer. It had been a mistake to speak before. He remembered being Angelus—the slightest chink in your armor, and he could psychologically gut you. Angel didn't _have_ any armor from Angelus.

_Aw, going all strong and silent on me? Give it up, Liam. Just let it go. It's like the First Evil said: you've never been very good at anything but pain. So I'll tell you what. You toss that little splinter over the side, and I'll remake you. You'll never be me again, of course, but you'll be a hell of a lot better than you are now. If you want, I'll turn Buff, too. Think about it. You, her, forever. You won't even have to share. What do you think?_

"I think Belial was _much_ better at temptation than you are," Angel answered absently. The light from the spear (_Why haven't my hands burned to ashes by now? It hurts like hell, but…)_ was shining _on_ something. Some object floating in the dark, empty forever. If it was what he thought it was…

_Don't test my patience, Liam. You know what happens to people who test my patience. Just let it go._

"Why is it so important that I let it go? What are you afraid of?"

_I tried to do this the easy way._

A punch flew in from the darkness, sending Angel spinning. A kick slammed into the small of his back, and it would have driven him to his knees if there were any ground to fall to in this place. Then they were all over him: hands, burning cold hands, punching, tearing, grasping. One grabbed his throat and another planted itself over his face, and if he were human he would have suffocated.

Then some of the hands started to tear at his fingers.

"_No_!" He shouted, thrusting the spear out like a quarterstaff. The silver fire blazed and he howled in agony as he felt the designs searing into his hands, but the fireburst drove the attacking shades back.

It also allowed him to see them.

"No. Oh, no."

_Yes. Oh, yes._

All of his friends were arrayed before him. They had been Turned, and they were showing their demon-faces. Worse, it was immediately clear that they had been Turned by Angelus himself, as they were more completely demonic than the Master or Kakistos had ever become. Giles sported horns, while Joyce lashed a barbed tongue. Faith had huge, ripping claws. In fact, her fingers had lengthened and stiffened and grown a bony ridge on their undersides, so each finger had become a scythe-blade. Oz was in his man-wolf form, but he was clearly rabid now, dripping living foam from his jaws.

And Buffy stood at the head of them all, flapping a pair of batlike wings.

"Hello, lover," she said.

_I caught them not long after you came in here._

Angel whipped around. The object that he'd spotted rose up out of the depths to hang in the emptiness before him. As he'd suspected, it was what remained of Angelus's physical form. It was a hollow shell: the eyes and lower jaw were gone, as was the skull above the left eye. One leg was missing below the knee, and the other was missing its foot. One arm was missing its hand, the other just a finger. Bullet-holes and glass-slits littered the torso. And through all of these gaping wounds, Angel could see nothing but emptiness. As he watched, one of the remaining fingers crumbled and fell away into the abyss.

"You're lying."

_Am I? Sorry to disrupt your comforting little fantasy, Liam, but they're all right there in front of you. _

"How do I know they're not just little pieces of you that you shaped to _look_ like them?"

_What do you think a vampire _is_, Liam? I'm giving you one last chance: throw the spear away, join me, and you can live forever with them. Otherwise, you die here._

Something had been wrong with this whole conversation, and Angel finally figured out what it was. "Why don't you just take it away from me?" He asked.

_Excuse me?_

"You heard me. Back when I was you, I never made deals with my victims. I just took what I wanted. If this spear is such a problem for you, why don't you just take it away from me?"

_Be careful, Liam. I may not be so generous as to kill you. Maybe I'll destroy _them _instead. Spend forever with them, or spend forever without them. It's your choice._

"You can't touch it, can you? You can't even touch it." Then something else burst into his mind, full-grown and unquestionably correct. It came with the memory of the Scooby-things tearing at him, tearing at his hands and fingers, _but never touching the spear itself_. "And neither can they."

_SHUT UP!_ Angelus screamed through both his own mouth and those of the Scooby Gang. _I'm done reasoning with you, Liam! No more chances! Now DROP THE SPEAR!_

"My name—" Angel drew back his arm. "—Is not—" sighted along its length as if he had all the time in the world, as if Angelus's Scooby-horde wasn't charging at his back. "—Liam!" and hurled the spear with all of his strength.

The Scooby-vampires fell into dust and dissipated into the darkness.

_Oh, God, _Angel thought. _If that was really you, Buffy, please forgive me. I'm so sorry, but I know you wouldn't have wanted your body to be use the way he planned to use it._

The shell of Angelus hung in the air, staring with empty eyes at the length of wood that had pierced its hollow chest. The spear's flame had gone out, though the characters engraved in it still blazed with hot silver light.

"Please, God, don't let me have guessed wrong," Angel prayed.

Then the spear's light flared to sun-blinding brilliance, and Angelus threw his head back and screamed.

--

Outside, the wracking pain came to an abrupt end as Angelus's voices stopped chanting and started to scream. The tentacles, which had been making teasing passes and no real effort to catch them, as they easily could have, suddenly began to whip and writhe like dying snakes.

Riley, his strength returned, began to carry Buffy away more quickly. In his arms, her eyes fluttered open. "Buffy?"

"He did it," She murmured. Then, as if realizing what she'd just said, her eyes lit up, and she looked up into his face with an expression of pure joy. "He did it!"

--

Angelus had never experienced such pain. He had been tortured by Holtz, but that was nothing. He had inflicted untold agony in the centuries he had existed, but if all of it was condensed into a single moment, it was _nothing_. He could feel the holy symbols and prayers burning into him, each letter, each symbol a branding iron in his guts.

Guts? Hadn't he left his body, his vulnerability, behind?

Apparently not. Apparently no vampire, not even him, was safe from this.

He'd been mad, he knew. Insane with his vision. And he'd been a fool not to see the other side of that vision: if it was every vampire's unknowing ambition to murder the Earth Mother, if every vampire was her enemy, then She was also theirs. Every stake, every spear, every piece of wood that sent a vampire to dust was Her self-defense, and Her vengeance on the demons that murdered Her children.

But he'd been stronger than that. What was this force, this power that was burning him away from the inside?

Then it came, and there was no more thought.

The Coming of the Light.

--

The mewling, writhing pool of living blood gave one last wail, then burst into flame.

--

Light exploded from Angelus's eyes, the gaping cavity that had been his mouth, and his wounds. The light was blue-red-green it was white and it was colors that no eye had ever seen before. It was all colors and none and when it blazed up the screams doubled, trebled, and erupted from all corners of the Void.

Angel added his own cry of surprise and fear to the hell's chorus of pain as the Light blasted him away from the Heart of the Darkness.

--

A shaft of white light punched through the surface of Angelus's darkness, and Angel was thrown free. He hit the ground hard, skipped across the pavement like a stone two or three times, then rolled until he came to rest at the feet of the Scooby Gang.

Buffy, Wesley, Cordelia, and Faith's faces quickly filled his blurring field of vision.

"My God!"

"Angel! Are you okay, honey?"

_Run,_ Angel tried to say. _Run, get out of here, it's not done, it's still happening!_ All he heard was some kind of rusty grating noise, but it seemed to have the intended effect: all four of them looked in what he assumed was Angelus's direction, and started to move. He felt a strong arm slide under his back, and another under his legs.

"Are you sure it's safe to move him? He could have brain damage."

"We don't have much of a choice."

Angel felt himself rising up off the pavement, then the world blurred and went dark.

--

The pain had been had been unbelievable, fantastic, like nothing he'd ever imagined. But with the Coming of the Light something even worse had begun. Fourteen people had put a piece of their souls into the weapon, the bar of white light through his chest. And now those pieces flowed into him.

Angelus had never had a soul, something he'd always been proud of. Souls were a weakness, a sickness, the things that had Oz living in cages and Liam living in sewers. They were the things that took away the nerve to follow one's true desires, they masked one's true nature. Why, that pathetic, souled shadow of himself lacked the stomach to kill or torture even the most deserving, and he limited himself to drawings and poetry while denying himself the greatest art.

He'd never known.

He'd never _imagined_.

To have a soul is to be on a mainline to the reactor core of eternity. And now he had fourteen.

For the first time in his existence, he knew what it was to walk under the sunlight. To feel the warmth on his shoulders, to see the grass green beneath his bare feet, to feel the blades tickle at his toes.

He tasted chocolate in his mouth and knew it wasn't some bonbon fed to him by Darla, but a birthday cake, baked by his mother.

He looked in the mirror and saw his own face—and was that a wrinkle? A gray hair? Were there more hairs than there should be in his comb?

He took a bite of a hot steak, finding it juicy and delicious.

Clear stars, glowing moon—the holy night that he blasphemed just by existing.

The sweet tang of a blackberry, plucked from a wild bush, made all the sweeter by the black juice staining his fingers and the briar-scratches on his hands.

Hot blacktop, then hot sand burning his feet, a plunge into cool water, then breaking the surface and filling his lungs with fresh, precious air.

Life. This was all life. Things that he had remembered from Liam, but had never experienced for himself—

Until now.

_Pain._

Breaking his front tooth in his first bicycle crash.

He saw Willow (his girlfriend) and Xander (his boyfriend) making out. He/She had been coming to rescue them, and now this! Pain of betrayal, pain of an iron spike piercing through him, and pain—like taste—was so much sharper when he was alive.

A slap across his face from a man smelling of sweat and whiskey.

Falling down, skinning his knee while chasing after Xander and Jesse.

Finding an empty closet and an "I can't stay" note on his daughter's bed.

"I'm sorry, Riley. Forrest is dead."

Sharp, shattering pain, finding his lover dead in the bed that they'd shared.

Watching Buffy/himself vanish into the smoke, knowing that it's necessary, but unable to bear it nonetheless.

Watching Alonna dissolve into dust.

Something terrible happening in the darkness, another man smelling of sweat and whiskey and something else "Now don't tell anybody, this'll be our little secret" and the terrible, burning _pain_.

_Fear_

Slow, grinding fear of waiting every day to find out if today is the day his beloved daughter will come home, or if a police officer will appear at the door and say "I'm so sorry, Ma'am."

Faith is going to kill Angel he's so weak will I make it there in time?

Spike is coming back any minute—what'll we do? (_What, me helpless before _Spike_? That'll be the day_) Or worse, what if he just leaves us here? What if they never find us? Hold me…

The window was open last night, and Xander fell asleep. I might be a murderer.

They've come for me. Oh, Blessed Goddess, they've come for me. Donnie's here, and they're going to take me away. What if they reveal that I'm a demon? I can't let that happen.

"The Master will Rise and the Slayer will die." No…

That huge dragon rising from the school, all these vampires—this is insane. Watcher training never prepared me for this. I _won't _disgrace myself again, I _won't_.

_Guilt_

Their tiny, pathetic, human sins and failings speckled and defaced his own titanic, monolithic evil.

"Kick his ass."

The cowardice that allowed him to poison the girl he loved like a daughter because he was "just following orders".

Every person that Angelus kills or hurts (_wait a second I'm Angelus, aren't I?_) is my fault, because I couldn't muster the guts to kill him when I had the chance.

Weakness, lust, cheating on Cordelia/Oz/Willow.

"I wanted a happy, normal daughter. Instead, I got a Slayer." Placing the torch to the books.

Stabbing Lester again and again and again and won't the blood ever come off my hands?

The previously delightful sensation of feeling the stupid computer teacher's vertebrae snap beneath his fingers.

_Happiness_

I'm not a demon! Ow, my nose hurts. But they were ready to fight for me even before that. A family—I'm part of _their_ family now.

Alive? Oh, dear God she's alive. I don't know how they subverted the prophecy and I don't care. She's alive!

So this is what a peaceful picnic in the sunlight is like. I'd almost forgotten.

My boyfriend's in the band!

Yes, I'd like some eggs, tea…a job. Thank you for taking me in. I won't let you down.

What a beautiful apartment. I don't think I would have turned it down even back when Daddy still had his money. I can't believe it's mine. Well, I guess I can, now. I've had to fight for it. Hello Phantom Dennis. Hello, me. Welcome back to your life.

Oh, Buffy, I love you so much…

_Love_

This is dangerous. This is stupid. He's human. He's male. That means he's evil. I first came here to _punish_ him. I've spent 1,200 years punishing men _like _him. Why does he have to be so kind and gentle and brave and funny? It makes it so I can't get away from him. Besides, he has nice buttocks.

I'm sorry, Buffy, this is the _last_ thing I want to do, but life with me is no life for you.

Wake up, Willow, please. You've always been there. What would I do without you?

Pain. Relax. Breathe Pain! Press down. You're doing wonderful honey. Shut up and just hold my hand, Hank. **Pain.** Press down again. Breathe! Push! **Pain!** Almost there, I can see the head. Just one more time _push! _**PAIN!** There now, Mrs. Summers, it's a girl. Tiny person, warm and soft, put in his (?) arms. Wailing. Is she hungry? Oh, she's so beautiful. Love of the husband who helped make this child, love of the tiny life in his arms. Of little Buffy.

No.

Forever. That's the whole point.

No!

It was too much, too much! Too much love, too much pain, too much joy—desires, hopes, dreams, disappointments, sadness, anger and love co-existing.

NO!

Sex—making love, not just a gratifying grapple in the shadows. About pleasure or pain, yes, but also blood-deep intimacy, becoming one with—

NO!

Then fourteen voices in a chorus, saying to someone, sometimes each other, sometimes someone else: "I would die for you."

_**NO!**_

How could they stand this? It was unbearable, but this was their life every day, every minute, every heartbeat every breath of their mayfly, shooting-star lives. Feeling the time pass, feeling themselves die moment by moment, but even one of their tiny lives was too much for him to bear.

The Light blazed inside him, piercing into every last shadowed corner. The pain was burning him away, but he welcomed it. With this pain came death, and he welcomed death now.

--

Angel returned to consciousness with a snap, rather than the usual slow fade, and found himself staring into the grave face of an Asclepian demon.

An ordinary person might have been, to say the least, a bit put out to wake up and find a huge snake's face in his own. Angel was more concerned to see that something nearby was giving off light bright enough to wash out the demon's usually richly colorful scales.

"What's happening?"

"No time for that!"

Two hands hooked under his arms and hauled him to his feet, and the next thing he knew, he was stumbling down an alley between Riley and Gunn as they dragged him along. "Buffy?" Was all he could manage to get out as he did so.

"She and Faith tried to carry your heavy ass, but we ended up with the honor," Gunn informed him.

"Yeah. They may be stronger than us, but there's something to be said for having enough height to keep you off the ground," Riley said.

"Angelus?"

"Still dyin'," Gunn said.

--

The darkness, pierced in a score of places by beams of light, finally broke open and Angelus, his body restored to the image of Liam, rose up out of it. Impaled on a spike of light that sank deep into the Earth and pierced straight out to the heavens, light pouring from his eyes and his mouth, slowly rotating on his blazing axis, Angelus rose into the sky. Fifty feet. One hundred. More.

The light pulsed once, and Angelus was suddenly an indistinct shadow in the brilliant column.

Another pulse. Angelus vanished.

A third pulse and Angelus, encased in this terrible light, more merciless than the Sun itself, screamed for the last time.

The light exploded, filling the world with white, unflickering fire.

**One Last Look**

Tentatively, one by one, the Slayerettes, Angel Investigations, Lorne's demon troops, and Gunn's people all raised their heads to look around and see if it was over yet. All of them had wisely dived to the ground and behind various solid-looking objects as soon as Angelus had started to scream.

Not finding the widespread devastation that they had feared and more than half expected, they slowly rose to their feet and surveyed what they had wrought. What they discovered brought gasps and exclamations of shock, including some truly inspired swearing and appeals to various deities.

The docks and warehouse complex that had so recently housed Angelus and the Scourge were gone. Not reduced to charred ruins. Gone. The Pacific now washed on a golden beach where they had been. Rolling dunes had replaced the blacktop, and there were even some grass and palm trees. Sitting, unharmed, in the middle of the dunes, were the trucks and cars that Lindsey and Gunn's posse had brought.

"It's beautiful," Willow said, speaking for them all. And it was.

"We'll have to come back and enjoy it later," Riley said. "_Somebody's_ going to be here to check this out _soon_. With all this noise, the only question is if it'll be the police, or the National Guard."

"Wait," Buffy cried, pointing. "Look!"

They all followed her pointing finger, and when they saw what she'd seen, their expressions turned from awe to horror.

Standing in the middle of the new beach, beyond the vehicles, was a black, gleaming skeleton. The skeleton's face was turned up, and its arms were raised in warding positions, as if trying to protect itself from something it had seen in the sky. The spear was nowhere in sight.

With a weary sigh, Giles removed his glasses and began to polish them. "It seems we've one last task to accomplish before we leave. Best take care of it quickly then. I'm sure Mr. Finn is correct. Angel, would you do the honors?"

Angel nodded silently and started across the dunes. As he did so, he had only one thought on his mind: _It's over._

One hundred fifty years of unparalleled evil. One hundred years of madness. It all ended tonight. This last gesture would put the seal on it.

He reached the skeleton and paused. Interesting. Its fangs and brow-ridges were prominent, and even its ear-holes could be recognized as slightly deformed. Curiouser and curiouser. There wasn't even a hole in the chest.

He reached out and took hold of the sternum, threading his fingers through the ribs. This was for every life that Angelus had ended or ruined. This was for his family. Their friends. Their friends' children. This was for Drusilla, for William, for Penn. This was for Jenny and Willow and Buffy and Giles. Even poor old Holtz.

"But most of all, you bastard," he whispered. "This is for me."

He suddenly twisted and squeezed with all his might. The sternum crushed in his hand and the skeleton fell to dust.

Giles replaced his glasses on his face. "Well then," he began. Then he paused, trying to think of something appropriate to say for such a momentous occasion. Then he had it.

"It is finished."


	4. The Bloody Morning After

Of course, it wasn't finished. Stories are never finished until all of the people involved in them are dead. Even then, the people they leave behind have a tendency to carry on the story in their stead. So it might be more accurate to say that nothing is _ever _finished. Nothing ever ends.

Oh, Angelus was dead. There was no question about that. Dead and blown away by the sea winds, the clean Earth finally free of his corruption. If he had a spirit, it had descended to whatever hell would take him.

But less than a week before, they had all been thrown together as they never had been before, and their wounds had been ripped open. All of them. The wounds inflicted by life, by their war against the darkness, by each other. Belial had reopened each and every one, and not nearly all of them were bandaged.

The delicate, hopeful balance between Buffy, Angel, and Riley had shattered. There are some things that take a certain rare courage to attempt, and the correct combination of people, situation, and need is even rarer. The proper circumstances almost never align again. If such things go awry, the situation is usually left worse than before, the Earth scorched.

The three of them might, perhaps, have found some way to make it work if they'd had a chance to seal their bond. But they hadn't. And now the battle was over, the threat of immediate death gone, and the rest of the world had started to matter again. They couldn't muster the courage for a second try. Instead, they fell back apart and into despair.

Buffy had retreated to a bedroom of her own, and Riley and Angel had difficulty even looking at each other, let alone speaking.

Cordelia realized that she'd disrupted something very delicate, and very important. She felt a little bad about it, but what else could she have done? Besides knock. Angel had _needed_ to hear that message. She didn't know why Buffy hung her head every time she came near. She'd seen Buffy embarrassed. This wasn't it. It was almost like she was…ashamed?

Buffy could have told her that there was _plenty_ of reason for her to feel ashamed. Playing such games with the men who loved her. Riley had only suggested the whole idea because she was too selfish to accept that she couldn't have everything and make up her mind. That selfishness had made her think she was a special case; that what had been slutty in high school wasn't slutty for her. A lifetime taking on two men? A lifetime as a slut? Is that what she had come to? Could she have faced telling her mother about that? How about _Riley's_ mother?

Riley, meanwhile, just wandered around in a constant daze of _What was I thinking?_ And _What have I done? I've ruined everything!_

Angel, meanwhile, had slipped into despair. _Will it work? _Had transmuted directly into _Its never going to work_ for him. No relationship between him and Buffy was possible. He saw that now. They were just…doomed. It would always end in unhappiness. He would have to talk to her, tell her that. He'd agreed to let her make the decision this time, but that didn't mean he couldn't try to influence it.

If anyone else figured out what was going on between the three of them, they said nothing. Except Spike, of course. He figured it out almost instantly, and needled them mercilessly. Until he made the mistake of commenting that "If Blondie pulled it off, she's a more talented strumpet than I gave her credit for. Does it raise the price? Oh, I forgot. She's a philanthropist." The three of them had thrown him out into the courtyard, where he'd been forced to hide under a bush all day to avoid incineration.

If the rest of the group _didn't_ notice, it was because many of them had their own problems.

Not Xander and Anya, they were happy enough. But then, they were always content with simple, if loud, pleasures. Giles and Joyce, on the other hand, were avoiding each other with the same shamefaced silence as Buffy, Riley, and Angel.

Others had more serious problems.

--

"You did what?" Faith demanded, aghast.

This wasn't the reaction that Willow had expected from the younger Slayer, and she took a step backward. "We deleted all of your files from the criminal justice system," she repeated.

Faith sprung out of her chair like a Jill-in-the-Box and grabbed Willow by the shoulders, despite the hacker's attempt to take a few more steps back. "Put them back!" she cried in something strangely like a panic. "You've got to put them back!"

"I can't!" Willow protested.

"You have to!"

The door to Faith's room burst open, and a manwolf-form Oz, his nose full of Willow's fear, lunged through, landing in a crouch on one side of the door. Tara, clutching a fistful of glittering dust, followed his lead but broke to the other side.

Faith released Willow's shoulders and took a step back, raising her hands.

"You have to," Faith repeated, more softly but no less desperately.

Sensing that the immediate danger was past, Oz stood up. But he didn't change back. Tara lowered her hand. A little.

"We _can't_," Willow said. "It took the hacking job of mine and Oz's career, plus a little magic, to do it in the _first _place."

"Don't you _understand_?" Faith pleaded. "I have to pay for what I did."

Oz shifted back into human form, and Tara lowered her hand the rest of the way. There was no threat here, just a self-loathing that left them all stunned.

"But…but…you did," Willow protested. "The other day, you saved the world! That has to count for something."

"Just because I've saved a lot of lives doesn't mean it's okay for me to just take a few," Faith said. "B tried to explain that to me after I killed Finch, but I didn't listen."

"Finch was an accident," Oz pointed out.

"And he was a bad guy," Faith said. "And so was that courier I killed. But Lester wasn't either."

That silenced Oz and Willow, but Tara didn't know who "Lester" was. "You didn't just save the world the other night," she said. "You died."

"And I got better. Unlike Lester." That silenced them all. Look, I'm glad I got a chance to make my peace with you guys. I'm glad we're all five by five. But the only one who can forgive me for Lester is Lester, and oops, I made it so that Lester _can't _forgive me. So I have to take my medicine."

Willow shook her head. "I'm sorry, Faith. You could walk right up to the gates of a prison and demand that they lock you up, but unless you started killing guards, they'd just chase you away. You _don't exist_ to them anymore."

Defeated, Faith sat back down on her bed with a thump.

"You're more of a help to the world if you're out and free and fighting," Willow wheedled. "Maybe you could consider it your penance."

Faith lay back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, as if she was back in her bunk in prison. "Sorry, Red, no can do," she said. "I like it too much."

--

Gunn was standing outside the door when Willow, Tara, and Oz emerged.

"How much did you hear?" Oz asked.

"Enough," Gunn answered. "There's no reason for you three to feel bad about this. You were trying to do her a favor, and it turned out she didn't want it. Just like buying the wrong size at Christmas, that's all."

Willow and Tara thanked him and started off, but Oz lingered for a moment. "So now you know," He said.

"Already had a pretty good idea," Gunn replied.

"Sticking around anyway?"

"That's the plan."

Oz nodded. "Take care of her."

"That's in the plan, too."

"Good." With that, Oz followed off after his own mates.

--

But through all the turmoil and celebration, there was still work being done. Two days after the destruction of Angelus, Giles and Wesley made a discovery. The rest of the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations were quickly summoned to the lobby of the Hyperion.

--

"It's not over," Giles announced to the youths assembled before him. And the adult woman. And the two immortal demons.

A chorus of groans went up from all of the assembled youths. And both immortal demons. And even the adult woman.

"_Another_ one?" Xander's whine was partly exaggerated for humorous effect, but not entirely. "Come on, G-Man, we just stopped two Apocalypses—" He paused, then turned to Riley. "Apocalypsi? Did you ever find out what the plural for Apocalypse is?"

Riley shook his head.

"—Anyway," Xander continued. "We've done two of 'em in one week! When do we catch a break?"

"First of all, I told you never to call me 'G-Man' again," Giles said.

"But you let Faith—"

Giles cut him off. "I can't stomp Faith like the front row at a football riot if she annoys me."

Xander puffed up. "Is that a threat?" He blustered.

"Yes," Giles replied.

"Oh. Okay, then." Xander sat docilely back into his seat, everyone had a chuckle but Spike, who rolled his eyes, and Giles silently blessed the boy's jester personality. For once, it had actually helped.

"Second," Giles continued. "We suspect it may be a bit more personal." With that, he stepped aside and said "Wesley?"

The younger ex-Watcher stepped forward with a small paperback book.

"_That's_ the Lithium Prophecies?" Faith asked.

"Elysian. Yes and no. The original prophecies are engraved on two fifteen-meter-high obelisks made out of some reflective black stone that only appear in our space/time when the stars are right, which is roughly one day every 157 years. Fortunately, we were able to calculate the time and place of their last appearance: Northern Greenland in 1994. Even more fortunately, a team of our operatives was able to reach and photograph the obelisks during their time here. Most fortunately of all, our backup team was able to find the camp and the camera after the first team vanished. We were able to decipher the glyphs with the help of several extraordinarily powerful interpretation spells, none of which have worked for anyone—anywhere in the world—ever since. We printed a translation at a small print shop we have at the Watcher's Council Mother House, and disbursed it to all active Watchers."

That shut them all up.

"Oh." Faith said at last. "That sounds more like it."

"But a paperback?" Cordelia asked.

"Why give field operatives something that's hard to carry around?" Wesley pointed out.

"Returning to the point…" Giles prompted.

"Indeed." Wesley agreed. "We checked the Prophecies immediately upon being told to by the Metatron, of course, but we discovered that the pertinent sections discussed the time _after_ the defeat of Angelus, so—"

"Do you want me to do this?" Giles interrupted impatiently, holding out his hand for the book.

"All right, all right," Wesley said, waving him away. He held up the book, adjusted his glasses, took a deep breath, and read:

"The Slayer with Two Lives and the Vampire with A Soul shall lead their allies into the Valley of the Sun, on the night of the Sun's ascendance. There they shall meet the Horned One, and they shall confront their greatest foe."

"Hold on," Buffy said, forming a T with her hands. "Time out. Any idea who the Horned One is?"

"Several," Giles answered. "And not all of them are malevolent beings."

"But most are, aren't they?"

"Well…"

"Still, this is amazingly clear for a prophecy," Willow said. "It's practically painting us a road map."

"A road map to somewhere in Never-Never Land," Xander said. "What are you talking about?"

"No, honey, she's right." Anya said. "It's perfectly clear: we have to be in Sunnydale for Beltane.

"See?" Willow said, grinning triumphantly. "Pretty obvious now, isn't it?"

Xander stared back at the two most important women in his life, his face utterly blank. "Uh…yeah," he said at last.

"So what do we do when we get there?" Angel asked.

"There's more to the prophecy," Wesley said. "A great deal more."

"Well, then," Buffy said as the rest of the room fell silent again. "Let's hear it."

Wesley looked back down into the book and began to read.


End file.
